Coles Family History & Genealogy

Caroline May (Coles) Benney of Undera, Greater Shepparton City County, VIC Australia was born on August 20, 1884 in Inverell, Inverell Shire Council County, NSW, and died at age 79 years old on February 13, 1964 in Undera, Greater Shepparton City County, VIC.

Milton Coles of Melbourne, VIC Australia was born on June 17, 1920 in Broken Hill, NSW. He was married to Lesley Marion Wood Coles, and had a child Charles William Coles. Milton Coles died at age 75 years old on December 31, 1995.

Lesley Marion (Wood) Coles of Yarram, Wellington Shire County, VIC Australia was born on January 27, 1920 in Yarram, and died at age 92 years old on December 22, 2012 in Yarram.

Esther Coles of Albuquerque, Bernalillo County, New Mexico was born on March 30, 1902, and died at age 71 years old in April 1973.

Anne (Coles) Neale of Australia, got married to William Neale, and has children William Neale and Mary Neale. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Anne Coles Neale.

Harriet Florence (Coles) Ormston of Sunshine, City of Brimbank County, VIC Australia was born on September 22, 1898 in Stawell, Northern Grampians Shire County to Paterson James Cole and Ann Rosetta Cole. Harriet Ormston married Francis Ormston in 1922, and died at age 84 years old on June 13, 1983 in Sunshine, City of Brimbank County.

Sue E. (Dougherty) Coles of Kansas City, Jackson County, MO was born on April 24, 1924 in Yuda, Ozark County to Charles Calvin Dougherty and Bertha Mae (Fetters) Dougherty. Sue Coles had siblings Clifford Charles Dougherty, Louise Courtney (Dougherty) Dolan, Walter Wayne Dougherty, and Douglas Leon Dougherty. Sue's partner was Ernest Grady Burris on February 28, 1945 in Independence County, AR and they later separated. They had a child Joyce Ann Burris/Hunsucker/Dover. She also married Herbert Edward Coles, and they were married until Herbert's death on May 20, 1975. Sue Coles died at age 69 years old on December 30, 1993 at Cedar Valley Health Center in Raytown, Jackson County, MO, and was buried on January 2, 1994 at Royer's New Salem Funeral Home in Independence.

Dr. Marion Evelyn Edwards Coles Birth 15 Mar 1915, Vermont, USA Death 6 Nov 2009 (aged 94), Rosedale, Queens County, New York, USA Burial Pinelawn Memorial Park and Arboretum, East Farmingdale, Suffolk County, New York, USA Plot Grave 2, Plot A, Range 65, Block 3, Section 20 Memorial ID 217724496 · View Source Tribute taken from M.A.D.D. Rhythms website: Dr. Marion Evelyn Coles, who was the leader and choreographer of “The Silver Belles” and wife of the late great Honi Coles, passed away. Marion Coles began her professional career as a member of the inimitable ballroom team, Taylor and Edwards. In the early thirties, she freelanced as a chorus line dancer before touring with Silas Green from New Orleans, a comedy and musical show that traveled throughout the South. During the mid-thirties, Ms. Coles was asked to join Ristina Bank chorus line, one of the most famous chorus lines in the black theater circuit. The group’s popularity led to a position as the Number 1 stock chorus line at the Apollo Theater. During the thirties and forties, she appeared with numerous bands, including those of Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Count Basie. From 1980 to 1986, Ms. Coles was a member of Jane Goldberg’s Changing Times Tap Company, which received rave reviews in the United States and Europe. Since 1986, she has performed with and served as Artistic Director of the Silver Belles, a group of former chorus line dancers who worked at the Apollo Theater and Cotton Club when Harlem was the mainstay of New York night life. Ms. Coles has been a featured artist in Jazz Talk at Lincoln Center; Shades of Harlem at the Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture; Hank Smith’s The Story of Tap at Dixon Place, Vaudeville 2000 at La Mama and educational presentations at Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies, the Musem of Natural History, Barnard College and Columbia University’s Jazz Study Group. She and the Silver Belles were featured in 1999 at the St. Louis Tap Festival. She has taught master classes and workshops at New York University, Queens College, Kingsboro Community College, the Dance Theater of Harlem, and Tulane University’s Jazz Dance Project 2000, where she was also a featured speaker. In May 1995, her choreography was showcased in the Queens College Spring Dance Concert. Ms. Coles has received awards from the New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day (1992), International Women in Jazz, Inc. (1994), and the Oklahoma City University School of American Dance (2001). In 2002, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Queens College, City University of New York. Marion Coles is a featured dancer in the 2006 documentary Been Rich All My Life. Family Members Parents Hortense Elizabeth Freeman Edwards, 1896–1987 Spouse Charles "Honi" Coles, 1911–1992 (m. 1944) Siblings Kathryn E. Edwards Jones, 1916–1943 Children Charles Lester Coles, 1945–1947 1944, Charles "Honi" Coles married Marion Evelyn Edwards, a dancer in the Number One chorus at the Apollo Theater, and together, Coles and his wife had two children. On November 12, 1992, Charles "Honi" Coles passed away from cancer in Queens County, New York, aged 81. On November 6, 2009, his wife Marion Evelyn Coles died in Queens County, New York, at the age of 94.

New York Times OBITUARY Charles (Honi) Coles, 81, Dancer; Known for Elegance and Speed By JENNIFER DUNNING Published: November 13, 1992 Charles (Honi) Coles, a virtuoso tap dancer who won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway musical "My One and Only" and whom Lena Horne once described as making "butterflies look clumsy," died yesterday at his home in East Elmhurst, Queens. He was 81 years old. He died of cancer, said his wife, Marian. Mr. Coles was a dancer of superb elegance and feathery light technique, both as a member of Coles and Atkins, the tap duo, and as a soloist. A disciple of Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, he believed in dancing up on the toes and moving naturally. Although he never appeared in the kinds of movie musicals that helped to make dancers like Robinson and the Nicholas Brothers famous, Mr. Coles appeared in star dance roles on Broadway. He and his longtime tap partner, Cholly Atkins, performed a show-stopping routine they choreographed in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" in 1949, and Mr. Coles appeared as a soloist in "Bubbling Brown Sugar" in 1976 and "My One and Only" in 1982; his Tony Award, as well as the Drama Desk Award he won that year, were for best featured actor in a musical. Sophistication and Speed He and Mr. Atkins performed together with many of the great jazz bands from 1945 to 1949. Coles and Atkins was the last of the "class acts," tap duos that performed from the late 1920's to the late 1940's, known for their sophistication and musicality and the innovation of their dancing. But Mr. Coles was also known for his speed. As a young, self-taught dancer, he practiced alone for long hours each day for a year, in 1931, learning not just to speed up his dancing and to add more taps but, unusually, how to complicate patterns by extending the duration of the steps. Reminiscing about his long career in 1983, Mr. Coles, a courtly, unflappable man, said: "Things happen with me now from the knees down, nice and easy. But at one time I had the fastest feet in show business -- barring nobody. I'm not saying I was the best dancer, but I was the fastest." Mr. Coles grew up in Philadelphia, also the home of the Nicholas Brothers, at a time in the 1920's when every sidewalk and alley seemed filled with competing young tap-dancers, and his career mirrored the ups and downs of tap. His first jobs were in New York with the Three Millers in 1931, with the Lucky Seven Trio in 1932, and with Cab Calloway's band, where Mr. Coles and Mr. Atkins met. Time Out for the Army Mr. Coles and Mr. Atkins joined the Army in 1943, returning to New York after the war to dance together on Broadway, at the Apollo Theater and other famous theaters and clubs around the country and in Europe, including a highly successful tour of England in 1948. They broke up as a team, then reunited in 1955, performing in Las Vegas with Tony Martin and later with Pearl Bailey. With no jobs in sight, Mr. Coles worked as production manager at the Apollo through 1976, also serving as the president of the Negro Actors Guild. There were other brief reunions, including a 1962 appearance on a tap history program at the Newport Jazz Festival. While Mr. Atkins continued his solo career and taught Motown singers how to move, Mr. Coles became a major figure in the tap revivals of the 1960's and 70's, on the stage and television. Major stage shows included "Steps in Time" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, for which he was an artistic consultant, and "Black Broadway, 1900-1945" at Avery Fisher Hall, both in 1979. He returned to the academy in 1982 in "Tappin' Uptown," and appeared at the Village Gate with the Copasetics tap revue in 1984. Acting and Educating Mr. Coles also appeared in the films "Dirty Dancing" and "The Cotton Club." He was a master teacher at tap workshops throughout the country and taught black dance and its history at Yale, Cornell, Duke and George Washington Universities. He was a guest artist in Agnes de Mille's "Conversations About the Dance" programs with the Joffrey Ballet in 1977 and 1978. Mr. Coles received the New York City Award of Honor for Arts and Culture in 1986, the Capezio Award in 1988 and the National Medal of the Arts in 1991. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a brother, George, of Atlantic City, N.J.; a sister, Juanita, of Atco, N.J.; a daughter, Isabelle Coles-Dunbar of Rosedale, Queens; a son by a previous relationship; eight grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren. The funeral is to be on Monday at noon at St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Lexington Avenue at 54th Street.

Maria Hawkins (Ellington) Coles was in a relationship with Nat King Cole, and has children Carole Cole, Natalie Maria Cole, Nat Kelly Cole, Casey Cole, and Timolin Cole. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Maria Hawkins (Ellington) Coles.

Born March 17, 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA Died February 15, 1965 in Santa Monica, California, USA (lung cancer) Birth Name Nathaniel Adams Cole Nickname King Cole Height 6' 0½" (1.84 m) Nat King Cole was born Nathaniel Adams Cole at Montgomery, Alabama. He received music lessons from his mother and his family moved to Chicago when he was only five, where his father Edward James Cole was a minister at the True Light Baptist Church and later Pastor of the First Baptist Church. At 12 he was playing the church organ and at 14 he formed a 14 piece band called the Royal Dukes. Nat was a top flight sandlot baseball player at Wendell Phillips high school in Chicago. His three brothers, Ike, Eddie Cole and Frankie also played the piano and sang professionally. Nat was also an above-average football player in high school. His sister Evelyn Cole was a beautician in nearby Waukegan, Illinois. In 1939 he formed the King Cole Trio after his publicist put a silver tin-foiled crown on his head and proclaimed him King. He later toured Europe and made a command performance before Queen Elizabeth II. He had a highly-rated TV show in the 1950s but it was canceled (by Cole himself) because no companies could be found that were willing to sponsor the show. He was a big baseball fan and had a permanent box seat at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. He met his wife Maria Cole (a big-band singer) at the Zanzibar nightclub in Los Angeles through Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson show. Her parents protested her decision to marry Cole, claiming he was "too black". However, they were married in 1948 and had two daughters, Natalie Cole and Caroline. On April 10, 1956, at Birmingham, Alabama, he was attacked by six white men from a white supremacist group called the White Cizizens Council during a concert and sustained minor injuries to his back. Cole appeared in several movies, his last one being Cat Ballou (1965), starring Lee Marvin. Cole received 28 gold record awards for such hits as "Sweet Lorraine", "Ramblin' Rose" in 1962, "Too Young" in 1951, "Mona Lisa" in 1949 and Mel Tormé's "Christmas Song". His first recordings of the Christmas Song included the lyrics, "Reindeers really know how to fly" instead of "reindeer really know how to fly", a mistake later corrected by Capitol Records. He was also a composer and his song "Straighten Up and Fly Right" was sold for $50.00. A heavy smoker, he died of lung cancer. Spouse (2) Maria Cole (28 March 1948 - 15 February 1965) ( his death) ( 5 children) Nadine Robinson (27 January 1937 - 22 March 1948) ( divorced) Trade Mark (1) Smooth baritone voice

Hubert Coles has a brother David L Brunston. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Hubert Coles.

Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember George Coles.

Jesse J Coles of Washington, District of Columbia County, District Of Columbia was born on November 27, 1927 in Dist Of Columbia, and died at age 47 years old in September 1975.

Jesse C Coles of Petersburg, Petersburg City County, VA was born on April 4, 1920, and died at age 76 years old on December 25, 1996.

Russell A Jr Coles of Atlanta, Dekalb County, Georgia was born on July 31, 1915, and died at age 70 years old in August 1985.

Russell L Coles of Baltimore, Baltimore City County, MD was born on April 14, 1908, and died at age 61 years old in October 1969.

Samuel Edward Coles of Lenoir, Caldwell County, NC was born on May 13, 1916, and died at age 87 years old on November 28, 2003. Samuel Coles was buried at Salisbury National Cemetery Section 16 Site 279 501 Statesville Boulevard, in Salisbury.

Samuel S Coles of Hempstead, Nassau County, NY was born on August 5, 1910, and died at age 75 years old on December 28, 1985. Samuel Coles was buried at Calverton National Cemetery Section 11 Site 8865 210 Princeton Boulevard - Rt 25, in Calverton.

Frank F Coles of Lebanon, Wilson County, Tennessee was born on May 24, 1920, and died at age 53 years old in July 1973.