MOSES COX

7.         Moses2 Cox (John1) was born about 1796 in Kentucky and died in May 1850 of smallpox in Cedar County, Iowa, aged 54 (1850 mort. sch).  Moses married Sarah Hurst on 31 Dec 1818 in Wayne County, Indiana.  Sarah was born about 1801 in Virginia and was living in Rochester township, Cedar County, Iowa, at the time of the 1850 census.

     Andrew W. Young's History of Wayne County, Indiana (Cincinnati 1872) says, at p. 147: "The first Merchant in Abington was Moses Cox, son of John Cox, Jun., about the year 1818." 

     There was a Moses Cox in Connersville, Fayette County at the time of the 1820 census.  He is listed as having three males in his household, aged 16-18, and a female aged 16 to 26 (p. 5).  Of the males, two were engaged in commerce and one in manufactures.  It is likely that the age column for the males should have been 16-26.  On 2 Jul 1821, the sheriff of Fayette County sold part of lot 4 in Connorsville to Arthur Dixon to satisfy a debt against Moses Cox (Fayette Deeds A:453).

     Moses Cox was described in Sandford C. Cox's Recollections of the Early Settlement of the Wabash Valley as clerk of the court of Madison County, Indiana in 1824, when several men were arrested for murdering innocent Indians.  The county seat was apparently then at the Falls of Fall Creek.  Moses shot at one of the principal culprits as he escaped down a hill.  Moses Cox was admitted as an attorney in Warren County on 7 Oct 1830 (Thomas A. Clifton, Past and Present of Fountain and Warren Counties, Indiana 246 [Indianapolis 1913]) and is also named among the early attorneys at Lafayette, Indiana (Tippecanoe County) prior to the year 1831.  Lawyers during that period travelled to the county seats when court was in session, so this doesn't establish Moses's residence at the time.

             On 12 Jan 1830, Moses Cox mortgaged to Price Griffith ten acres in Tippecanoe County, being a strip of land 10 rods wide on the east side of the west fraction of the southwest quarter of section 29 in T23N, R4W, which land was in the same quarter section as the land that Moses' brother Israel and nephew Sandford later platted as an addition ot Lafayette.  Griffith apparently conveyed his interest to Willliam S. Trinkle and Joseph H. Martin, as, on 27 Nov 1830, they entered into a title bond promising to convey that property back to Moses if he should pay them $55 with interest within six months.  (Tipp. Co. deeds).

     In the 1830 census, Moses was enumerated in Lafayette, in Tippecanoe County.  He was over 40 and had a household with males 0-5 and 5-10, 2 females under 5 and a female 30-40.  Moses' age in this census does not match his age in the 1850 mortality schedule, but the latter is considered more reliable in that an exact age is given and a birth in the late 1790s is more consistent with the date of Moses' marriage and his apparent failure to participate in the War of 1812.

Moses Cox bought and sold lot 41 in Williamsport in 1832 and then bought lot 2 the same year (Warren Co. deed index).  Moses also bought an acre of land on North and Third streets in the West addition to Williamsport on 5 Oct 1832, which he sold to Israel H. Cox on 17 Aug 1836; whether this land is the same as one of the lots mentioned in the deed index is not clear.  Moses Cox opened a tavern in Williamsport in 1836, which was probably our Moses, although there was another unrelated Cox family in the area (Counties of Warren, Benton, Jasper and Newton, Indiana 88 [Chicago 1883]).  Moses Cox sold lot 17 in Williamsport in 1843.

 Moses Cox, Joseph Cox and Sandford C. Cox gave a note dated 18 Jul 1835 to John Eagan, administrator of the estate of William Eagan, promising to pay $114.23: by the following 18 April.  Sandford C. Cox of Tippecanoe County confessed judgment on this note in Tippecanoe County court on 10 Oct 1836.  It isn't clear whether all three men signed as makers or whether Joseph and Sandford were sureties for Moses. 

A Moses Cox bought the west half of the SW4 of section 2, T18, R1E in Rock Island County, Illinois on 2 Nov 1843.

     Moses is listed as a lawyer in the 1850 mortality schedule.  He was ill with smallpox for 17 days prior to his death that May.  It is assumed that the Mary E. Cox, age 24 and born in Indiana, who also died of smallpox in May, having been ill 12 days, was his daughter.

     Charles L. Chambers was appointed administrator of Moses Cox on 3 Feb 1851, giving a bond for only $100 with S.S. Swan as surety (Cedar Co. probate files).  It is not clear whether there was any subsequent administration of his estate.  Moses does not appear in the deed indices.

     The Moses Cox family seems to have been close to the family of Rachel (Cox) Knight and her husband, Samuel, who resided in the late 1850s near Moscow, Muscatine County, Iowa, only about 5 miles south of Rochester in Cedar County.  Both David and William Knight, Rachel's sons, made affidavits in support of Alfred Cox's pension application, stating that they had known him for at least five years prior to his enlistment in 1861 and that he had been a sound man.  William added: "Affiant and claimant were on most familiar terms and usually saw each other on an average of every month and spent several days together at the time of claimant's enrollment."

     Children:

48       i.       William H.3 Cox, b. 1821, Indiana; m. Caroline Sutford

           ii.       Mary E. Cox, b. abt 1826, Indiana; d. May 1850, Cedar Co, Iowa (smallpox)

 49     iii.       Alfred B. Cox, b. abt 1830, Indiana

          iv.       Moses H. Cox, b. abt 1833, Indiana

 50      v.       David Marshall Cox, b. 14 Apr 1836, Indiana; m. Mary Elizabeth Kern

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