Soniovie Susannah Cordery

Susannah was a Cherokee Woman

While various unsourced trees have tried to assign parents to Susannah, no documentation has been presented to support any claims as to who her parents may be.

Biography

Susannah (Cherokee) Cordery was a member of the Cherokee Wild Potato Clan.
Susannah Sonicooie was born about 1768 in the Cherokee Nation. Her parents names are unknown but she was a full-blood Cherokee, a member of the Blind Savannah Clan. [1]

She married a white man named Thomas Cordery about 1785. They were the parents of eight children: Sarah Cordery, Lucy Cordery, Nancy Ann Cordery, Charlotte Cordery, David Cordery, Hettie Cordery, Early Cordery, and Susan Cordery. [2] They are the great, Great Grandparents of Will Rogers on his father's side through Lucy Cordery Rogers. Thomas Cordery took a reservation of land "in right of his wife" under the treaty of 1817. [3]

Susannah died in 1841 at Cumming, Georgia. [4]

Research Notes

The name Sonicooie, or the alternate spelling of Soniovie, was her given name. It is not a surname. The Cherokee language has no 'v' sound. The 'v' is used phonetically to represent a nasalized 'u' or 'oo' that the English language does not have. Susannah was a name that was used for her after she began living amongst Europeans. In the rules of Wikitree, for Native Americans with no LNAB, we use the name of the tribe in that spot.

Her name has also been recorded by family as Rosanna Blue as was reported in Benedict's biography on John Rogers. [5]It seems likely that the Sonicooie/So-ni-gu-i/Soniovie/Saunooke would all be acceptable phonetic spellings for a word that probably originally meant blue or a particular type of blue. The Cherokee word for blue is spelled sa-go-ni-ge on the lexicon on the [Cherokee website]. It appears to have originally been a popular given name amongst the Cherokee and not a surname as they have come to be used since colonization though it is now sometimes used as such.

(Curator note: per James Hicks, “ Thomas Cordery +Susannah nee Sonicooie; The way this is written indicates that Susannah Sonicooie had been previously married but the married name is not known.

The name Susannah was given by the missionaries.)

Sources

1. ↑ Shadburn, Don. Unhallowed Intrusion. privately published, Cuming , GA, 1993. p. 88
2. ↑ Hampton, David K., Cherokee Mixed-Bloods. Arc Press of Cane Hill, Lincoln, Arkansas. 2005. p. 17
3. ↑ Hampton, David K. , compiler, Cherokee Reservees. Baker Publishing Co., Oklahoma City, OK. 1979, p. 1
4. ↑ Shadburn, p. 98
5. ↑ [John Rogers Biography by Benedict.]

• Starr, Emmet, History of the Cherokee Indians and Their Legends and Folklore, reprint by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., originally published 1921.
• Benedict, John Downing. Muskogee and Northeastern Oklahoma: including the counties of Muskogee, McIntosh, Wagoner, Cherokee, Sequoyah, Adair, Delaware, Mayes, Rogers, Washington, Nowata, Craig, and Ottawa. Chicago: S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1922.

Source: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cherokee-112
__________

THOMAS1 CORDERY was born Abt. 1763 in Georgia, and died 1840 in near Cumming, GA.
He married SUSANNAH SO-NI-GU-I Abt. 1785, daughter of SO-NI-GU-I.She was born Abt. 1764.

• 1817-19 Reservations: July 1817, #5, west of Chatahoochee, in Right of Wife, 4 in family
• Blood: Irish
• Note: "Indian Countryman"

Notes for SUSANNAH SO-NI-GU-I:
Cordery 1 Thomas Cordery +Susannah nee Sonicooie; The way this is written indicates that Susannah Sonicooie had been previously married but the married name is not known.

• Blood: Full Blood Cherokee
• Clan: Ani'-Ga'tâge'wi = Kituah or Wild Potato (Sonicooie)

Children of THOMAS CORDERY and SUSANNAH SO-NI-GU-I are:
2. i. NANCY ANN2 CORDERY, b. Abt. 1782.
3. ii. LUCY ELIZABETH CORDERY, b. Abt. 1784; d. Bet. 1851 - 1895.
4. iii. SARAH CORDERY, b. Abt. 1786, Georgia; d. July 14, 1842.
5. iv. CHARLOTTE CORDERY, b. 1788; d. March 17, 1883.
6. v. DAVID CORDERY, b. Abt. 1794; d. Abt. 1839.
7. vi. HETTY CORDERY, b. Abt. 1801; d. Bef. 1851.
8. vii. EARLY CORDERY, b. November 28, 1807.
9. viii. SUSAN CORDERY, b. Abt. 1809, CNE [Forsyth Co, GA]; d. Bet. 1851 - 1895.

Source: Hicks, James R. “Cherokee Lineages: Register Report of Thomas Cordery” Genealogy.com, Sites.Rootsweb.com, 2023, https://www.genealogy.com/ftm/h/i/c/James-R-Hicks-VA/BOOK-0001/0007...
__________

Susannah [Son-eh-coo-ih] married a white man named Thomas Cordery (Cordry/Caudry) around 1785 in the old Cherokee Nation. They lived in a village known as "Suwanee Old Town," now in northwest Georgia. She raised 8 half-blood children herself, and Thomas was not around much. A Cherokee enrollment application form by one of her granddaughters lists the applicant's grandparents as "Thomas & Susanna Cordery."

Her eldest child, Sarah Cordery Rogers, married John Rogers, Jr. of the Chattahoochee, and they in turn had 12 children, all of whom survived to adulthood.

Susannah was a matriarch of the Blind Savannah, or Wild Potato, clan. Some list her date of death as 1818 but there seems to be no proof of that. According to historian Don L. Shadburn, Susannah was likely buried on the hillside overlooking the Rogers Bridge area in present day Gwinnett/Forsyth/John's Creek area. He recalls observing some unmarked graves in that area during his research in the 1970's.

Source: Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86516560/susannah-soniovie-cordery: accessed 18 April 2023), memorial page for Susannah Soniovie Sonicooie Cordery (unknown–unknown), Find a Grave Memorial ID 86516560; Burial Details Unknown, Exact location unknown, but probability of unmarked grave site is high due to detailed research by Don L. Shadburn; Maintained by bryan j (contributor 47375769).
__________

Suwanee began as an Native American village about 3 miles southwest of the current downtown area along the banks where Suwanee Creek runs into the Chattahoochee River. For hundreds of years prior to the beginning of the Town of Suwanee, a large Native American village flourished on both sides of the river. The village was originally settled by Shawnee, but later, according to U.S. government documents, both Cherokee and Creek came to the area they referred to as Suwanee Old Town. The village/town is shown on maps indicating land ceded to the U.S. government by the Cherokees in 1817 and the Creeks in 1818.

There are various accounts regarding the naming of the City of Suwanee. One suggests that Suwanee is a Native American word meaning “echo,” while another maintains that it is the Creek word for Shawnee. Another account credits the name to the early white settlers’ way of pronouncing the word “Shawnee.” Either way, the name Suwanee appears to be closely tied to the city’s Native American heritage.

The federal government recognized Suwanee as a town when the Suwanee Post Office was established in 1838. As is the case with many communities throughout the South, Suwanee’s growth is tied to the evolution of transportation. As transportation evolved, so did the community of Suwanee.

Source: Suwanee, S. W. (2023). History. Suwanee, GA. Retrieved April 18, 2023, from https://www.suwanee.com/explore-suwanee/about-suwanee/history