Recovered Oser family-genealogy correspondence — April 27–May 2, 2014. Scott Oser was independently checking and correcting the Oser/McCoy/Hoffman family tree using census records, death records, and an older online family tree. Any conflicting dates or birthplaces below remain research questions rather than settled facts.
Scott reported that “a little googling” had uncovered a possible family trail back to 1656 and pointed the family toward an online tree that eventually connected to Albert P. Oser. He then copied much of the material into a Word document and began checking it against U.S. census records from 1870 forward because some of the inherited genealogy appeared incomplete or incorrect.
Scott said he cleaned up duplicate entries, updated the Oser line where he felt confident, and pushed part of the McCoy line farther back before reaching a research wall.
Two examples showed why he was cautious. Joseph Hoffman appeared in records with contradictory dates: one 1900 census entry suggested an 1861 birth in Germany but also an impossible immigration date earlier than his birth. Scott thought an immigration year of about 1871 was more plausible and suspected a later obituary describing Hoffman as New York-born could have reflected the anti-German climate of World War II, but he had not found an immigration record to prove it.
John McCoy Sr. was similarly inconsistent across records. Scott found a 1910 census implying a birth around 1884 and reporting Kentucky origins for John and his parents, while a death certificate listed Virginia as John’s birthplace. Scott treated the 1884-era birth year as much more plausible than 1895 but did not claim the Kentucky/Virginia question was resolved.
The surviving email archive also contains Scott’s attached file Oser Family Geneology.doc (original spelling), which should be preserved as a source document for a later document-review pass.
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