[Continued]
Jim was fifty-four when his father,
Thomas Jefferson Cox, age eighty-one, died September 15, 1892, while living at
Equality. He was buried beside the
mother of his children, Susannah Miranda (Leach) at East
Providence Cemetery
on Prentiss Road, Ohio County.
Their little son, John T. B. Cox, who died when he was five in 1853, was
also buried near their graves, as was their granddaughter, Bertha Belle Cox.
~.~
As documented in the marriage
records of the Ohio County Courthouse, Volume 10, Page 4, James William Cox remarried
six days after Mary Cox remarried. At
age fifty-eight, he married Rebecca Patterson, age fifty-five, April 9, 1896.
There were other Cox weddings in
1896. James and Mary’s daughter, Emma Catherine, age twenty-two, married Henry
Cicero Crowder on April 20, 1896, eleven days after her father’s marriage. On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1896, Emma’s
younger sister, Cinderella Cox, age twenty-one, married Hannibal Thomas “Tom”
Crowder. That left children at home,
Jasper Newton, almost twelve, Bertha Belle, age nine, and Sarah Mae, age
six. James William Cox certainly needed someone
to run his household and help out with his young children still living at home.
The children of James William Cox
called their new stepmother “Aunt Becky,” a common title in those days, even
though she was of no relation. My
grandfather was about twelve when his father remarried. He said he did not like “Aunt Becky” much. Of course, she probably had a difficult time,
trying to be a substitute mother to the younger Cox children, who may have
resented her and tried her patience at times, especially a boy just about to
enter his teen years.
~.~
Three or four years later, my
grandfather left home and joined the army.
At fifteen or sixteen, Jasper Newton Cox was stout and strong for his
age and could do almost anything a man could do. He may have gone to work somewhere in or
around the countryside. When he enlisted
in the army in August 1901 at Leitchfield, the Grayson county seat, he had just
passed his seventeenth birthday on May 10 that year, but the army recruiters
believed him when he fibbed and claimed to be eighteen.
~.~
It is known that Rebecca A.
Patterson had previously been married, but documented proof has not been discovered
as to the name of her first husband. In
the June 1900 census while she and James were living in the Cromwell district,
she told the census taker, John Stewart, that she had been the mother of two
children, neither of whom were living.
Listed as head of household was her husband, James W. Cox and his two
youngest children, Bertha B., 13, and Sarah M., 10. Volney J. James, 22, was listed as a hired
hand. Nearby neighbors were the families
of Miles and Mary Keown and Matty and Susie Baize, and also Charles and Fidella
(Porter) Sanders (my great-great grandparents – and the grandparents of my own
grandmother, Eva Caroline (Smith) Cox).
On September 22, 1900, J. W. Cox
and wife, Rebecca, sold to James M. Hatler, for four hundred dollars, 104 acres
of land described as lying on the waters of Indian Camp Creek, and bounded on
one side by the farm of Nathan Keown.
Hatler paid cash of $200, with a remainder to be paid in ten years at
$20 per year. If promptly paid, there
was to be no interest and if not, interest would be at six percent. In the same deed, James Cox also conveyed
another piece of land he owned by possession right that joined his above land
which contained 16-5/16ths acres. This
deed was attested by G. N. Cox (Gabriel Netter) his son, and his neighbor,
Mathias Baize.
As reported in the March 27, 1901
issue of the Hartford Herald –
Smallhous, KY
-“Mr. J. W. Cox will shortly move from this place to
Cooper’s Schoolhouse.”
And in the same edition and same
day, also in the Smallhouse column, was this bit of information:
“Mrs. Rebecca Cox gave a birthday dinner on
the 24th instant, it being
her 60th birthday. Several of her neighbors and friends dined
with her.”
This announcement followed the
purchase of 10.2 acres of land by J. W. Cox on March 25, 1901 from H. J. Wilson
and J. E. Wilson for $250.00. The land was
described as lying in Ohio
County on the headwaters
of Indian or West Fork Creek and bounded as follows:
“Beginning at a stone on the South Side of Hartford and Morgantown Road,
corner
to Mrs. P. F. Taylor”...(later to become the third wife of James W. Cox).
On that same day, James W. and
Rebecca turned around and sold two acres of land for $250 to H. J. Wilson and
J. E. Wilson, described as:
“A certain lot or parcel of land lying in
the town of Pincheco, Ohio
County, Kentucky, and bounded as follows: Beginning at W. W. Anglea
South E. corner on the State Road; thence
with said road 69-1/2 yards to
a stake in said road; thence N. 29
E. 129-1/2 yards to a stake in D. A.
Miller line; thence with D. A.
Miller line S. 71 W. 69-1/2 yards to a stake
in said Anglea line; thence with
Anglea line S. 29 W., 129-1/2 yards to the
Beginning, containing 2 acres, more
or less, Except and reserving out of
said boundary or survey, the space
on which the old store house stood,
formerly
owned by Nall & Lewis, or Nall heirs, including the drip & chimney
of
said house, for further reference you will refer to Deed from Montage
to
Jacob H. Leach.”
The deed was attested by John H.
Stewart, his son-in-law, husband of Susanah “Susie” (Cox) Stewart.
According to the Bible record of
James William Cox, he and Rebecca were married a little less than seven
years. Rebecca (Patterson) died at age sixty-two,
September 2, 1903, just three weeks after the death of her step-daughter,
Bertha Belle, who died with typhoid fever at age sixteen, ten months, and
twenty-five days. It is my guess that
Rebecca died from typhoid fever, too. An
obituary might confirm this theory. Rebecca’s date of death is recorded in the
Bible of James W. Cox; also that of Bertha Belle Cox.
Both Bertha and her step-mother, Rebecca
are buried at East Providence Cemetery, near the graves of Thomas Jefferson Cox
and his wife, Susannah Miranda (Leach) Cox. What a sad time for the Cox family – two
funerals within three weeks.
~.~
About four months after the death
of Rebecca, James Cox was married a third time to Prudence F. Taylor, a nearby
neighbor and member of the Slaty
Creek Church
where he attended church. He was
sixty-six and she was seventy.
On May 23, 1904, the day before
they married, J. W. Cox and Mrs. P. F. Taylor, entered into a Marriage
Agreement at Pincheco, Ohio County, of very simple nature, which
they had drawn up and notarized by L. M. Worley. Both wanted harmony and mutual understanding in
their marriage. Because they were older
and each had children by previous marriages, they agreed it was a good thing to
draw up a contract, thus preventing and removing possibility of disagreement
over assets or inheritance by their children.
Both probably believed in the old adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
The document was recorded at the courthouse
in Deed Book 27, page 71, and outlined the couple’s agreement in regard to the
land each owned, individually.
“A Marriage Agreement or Contract
entered into by J. W. Cox and
Mrs.
P. F. Taylor, by which it is to be known that said P. F. Taylor
takes
no dowery or Part in said J. W. Cox Estate by reason of their
Marriage,
but the land belonging to each or either of them is to be
cultivated
for the support of the family, so long as we two live as man
and
wife, and at the death of either, their property shall descend to
his
or her heirs.
Signed: P. F. Taylor
J.
W. Cox
The above contract acknowledged
before me this May 24, 1904.
(seal) L. M. Worley, Notary Public
Ohio County, KY
State of Kentucky
)
County of Ohio )
I, M. S. Ragland, Clerk
of the Ohio County Court,
to certify that the
foregoing Marriage Agreement was
this day lodged in my office for record
and I have recorded it in the
foregoing and this certificate in my said office.
Given under my hand this 27th
day of May 1904.
M.
S. Ragland, C.O.CC”
Their license to wed, along with
the licenses of several other couples, was later published in the Hartford Republican newspaper, on
Friday, June 4, 1904, which read:
“James Cox of Pincheco and P. F. Taylor of Cromwell”
~.~
About three weeks after James Cox
and Prudence Taylor married, fire broke out on June 11, 1904 in the little town
of Cromwell in
the hardware store of James Hudson. It
quickly spread with intensity to consume the town, including the
following: The Hudson Hardware Store; T.
C. Pirtle, Grocer; Cooper Brothers Merchandise; E. S. Keown Dry Goods; W. M.
Eicher Grocer; Joe Kahn Dry Goods; E. P. Gilstrap Millinery; T. P. Faught Dry
Goods, as well as the School House and the Masonic Hall. It was devastating to
the businessmen and to everyone in the surrounding area.
~.~
James and Prudence Cox were married
about eleven years and everyone in the family loved “Aunt Pru.” She has always been remembered by family members
for the butter molds she made and set out on her kitchen and dining table when
visitors came to call. She also earned a
bit of household money by churning and selling her butter and eggs to merchants
at Cromwell and to her neighbors in the community.
At night, most likely, she set out
pans of freshly milked milk and let the cream rise, repeating this process and
adding to it until enough was accumulated and had slightly soured. Then it was poured up into a tall wooden or
crock churn. A four-bladed wooden
dasher, hand-held, was used to churn up and down, until eventually butter
formed. The pale yellow butter was
scooped out into a wooden bowl, washed and washed with cold water until all the
whey was out, then lightly salted to help preserve it, and it was turned out
and pressed into molds.
No doubt, Aunt Pru took pride in
her collection of old fashioned butter molds and various butter stamps. She may have used stamps, made in several
shapes and sizes, to decorate her butter.
Stamps came in a variety of designs - flowers, fruit, and birds - symbolic
of hospitality and welcome; or a sheaf of wheat, symbolic of prosperity; or
perhaps an acorn, a symbol of luck.
At breakfast, when company was
there visiting, she may have served her butter in an ornamental butter dish,
garnished with a bit of parsley or mint.
Butter making and molding was an art that goes back for hundreds of
years, and she may have stamped her own design on her butter to identify it. It was a focal point of her table and long remembered
by Cox family members.
Aunt Pru added to the family cash
income by tending the chicken yard and henhouse, raising chickens and selling
eggs and young roosters at market. Jim
and Pru had a good partnership, and for eleven years, their lives were largely
spent within the radius of the Cromwell and Select communities, enlarged
through links with kin who visited them, and in reading the county newspaper,
books and magazines. Sunday was set
aside for church at the Slatyville church, and attending area protracted
meetings.
~.~
My grandmother told me that in
early life James Cox was a member of the Christian church at Select. She once told me about a “dream walk” she
took in memory through Select and called off the names of the stores and establishments
on both sides of the road as she walked down it in her memory. She mentioned the post office, the hardware
store, the general merchandise stores, and the Christian church where James Cox
attended church. Later James Cox
attended the Slaty Creek church with Aunt Pru.
~.~
It was a day filled with sorrow for
James Cox and all the Cox and Taylor families, when Prudence Cox died at
eighty-three on February 6, 1916. She
was well loved in her community and neighborhood. Her death certificate was furnished to me by
Charles Leach of Nashville, which indicates her date of death
was February 6, 1916; she was listed as married and a housewife. Bryan Taylor was the informant; Dr. Oscar
Allen was the attending physician. The
cause of death was given as “old age.”
Burial was to be in the “Family Grave Yard."
An obituary clipping (without date)
from an Ohio County
newspaper for Prudence F. (Taylor)
Cox was given to me by Loretta Westerfield, and says:
~~..~~
In Memory
“Beaver
Dam Ky.
Feb. 12 - Mrs. P. F. Cox, wife of J. W. Cox, living near Cromwell, died Feb. 6,
in her 83rd year.
Mrs.
Cox had been about her regular household duties Saturday and died Sunday
afternoon. She had been a member of the
Baptist church, since she was 13 years of age.
She leaves two children: Mrs. S.
I. Stevens, Beaver Dam and Mr. S. M. Taylor of Kansas City, MO.
Her
funeral was preached by her pastor, Eld. R. L. Creel, at her residence, 8th
inst. Since, she had long been a member
of Slaty Creek church. Peace to her
memory.”
~~..~~
Prudence F. Tatum was first married
to Alfred Warder Taylor, a former pastor of the Slaty Creek
Church, and they were
shown in the 1870 census, both age thirty-six with six children: Ella, Mary,
Stephen M., and Robert C., Mattie C., and Milla Y. Alfred Taylor died in 1896, and eight years
later, his widow married James William Cox, May 24, 1904.
~.~
About five
years after James Cox and Prudence Taylor married, it appears he began
investing some of his money in land, and continued this pursuit during the
period of time he was married to Prudence Taylor.
On January 7,
1909, at age seventy, James W. Cox purchased more land from William D. Newton
of Fordsville, Ohio County, KY, for $1,500, but nowhere in
the deed does it name the number of acres purchased. He paid $600 in cash, with the remainder in
four land notes of $200 each, and one land note for $100 of even date, with
remaining payments starting on January 2, 1910 through January 2, 1914, “with
interest at 4 percent, holding a lien on the land for payment of same.” The land was located in Ohio and Hancock counties, on the waters of
Adams Fork.
The seller,
William D. Newton, reserved “the coal under said land for the period of twenty
years, with the right to mine same during said time, with a right-of-way from
the County road to the mine opened on same.”
The deed was recorded on March 13, 1909 at the Ohio County Courthouse,
by W. S. Tinsley, C.O.C.C.
Nine days later
on January 16, 1909, John Newton, of Fordsville,
Ohio County, sold eight acres of
land to J. W. Cox, of Fordsville, so it may be that James Cox had moved to this
town where he had once had a blacksmith shop at the age of twenty-two. He paid cash of $115 for the eight acres,
which was also located on the waters of Adam’s Fork Creek. Perhaps James Cox was just speculating that
he could turn a profit on this land because of the coal mining going on there,
and the fact that Fordsville then had the Elizabethtown
and Paducah Rail Road
running through it. Possibly, he thought
the town would grow and land would be a good investment for his money.
A year later on
February 25, 1910, James W. Cox purchased another eleven acres, located on the
West side of the Fordsville and Cloverport road, from H. F. and Annie G. Hobbs
for the sum of $300 cash.
It is unknown
whether or not he still owned the acreage he purchased at Fordsville before his
death in 1931. Most likely he had sold or
traded it.
~.~
James Cox, at age seventy-eight,
was married a fourth and last time to Anna M. Simpson on June 20, 1916. In the 1920 census, enumerated on January 26,
James Cox and Ann M. Cox lived at Rosine Precinct. James was listed as eighty-one. Ann was
listed as fifty-four, born June 1862, in Kentucky,
parents born Kentucky. They were married not quite seven years when
she died.
Anna was the daughter of John
Chancellor, mother’s name not yet determined - only the name of “Chancellor”
was given as her mother’s name on Ann’s death certificate. According to her death certificate, “Annie”
Cox died February 25, 1923 and is buried beside her first husband, Gilbert
Simpson, in the Rosine Cemetery, Ohio County.
After Ann’s death in 1923, James
William Cox, about eighty-five, lived at various times with his children, taking
turns with those who lived in Ohio
County. In the spring of 1930, when the census taker
came to call, James W. Cox, ninety-two, was living at Rosine with his daughter
and son-in-law, Cinderella and Tom Crowder, who at that time had been married
about thirty-four years. Tom was a
farmer; James was listed as “retired.”
~.~
My father told me that when he was a
young boy, he remembered a time when his grandfather, James W. Cox, came to
visit and stayed with them for several weeks. Most likely, this visit would have
been about the year his wife, Prudence (Taylor), died February 6, 1916, which
means my dad would have been about six or seven. Daddy told me several stories
about his grandfather, Jim Cox, and going in the wagon with him to visit some
of his other children, as well as a story about going swimming in Green River.
In December 1976 when I was doing
an audio-taped oral interview with my dad, I asked him if he ever visited his
father’s daddy, and he remembered a time when his grandfather came to stay with
them for awhile. My dad said:
“Oh yes.
Yes, I visited him, but I never visited in his home but one time.
After my grandmother died, on my
father’s side. My father and I…he lived
with us for a while…came to live
with us, because he didn’t want to stay
up
there by himself in that big old house, so they persuaded him to come
live
with us. And we took a wagon, and went
up there and got some of his
things…clothes
and a trunk, and a few things that he wanted to bring down
there
with us. We were nearly all day going up
there and back…at Rosine.
Up
there where Loretta lives.
Then
I saw him again when we were back there on a visit. And he was at
my
Aunt Cinderella’s house, then. We went
up there and stayed all day,
and
he was living with them. And he was an
old man then. He lived to
be
ninety-three.
“I
can remember us going down to Uncle Orlando’s and Uncle Iry’s and we
were
going to go to the Green River and go in
swimming. And we went in
the
wagon, and when we got Uncle Iry in the wagon, he asked Uncle Orlando
if
he wanted to go by and get Grandpa…said he bet he would like to go. And
Uncle
Orlando said, “Oh, he wouldn’t go swimming.”
And Uncle Ira said,
“I’ll
bet you he would if you went by and got him.”
And so we went by. And
it
was all men and boys in the wagon.
“And
we drove down to a big high bluff…where there was a real deep hole.
The
water was just as clear as it could be.
And everybody stripped their clothes
off,
and I never will forget how knotty he was, and old. But as old as he was,
he
ran over there to that great big rock bluff and dived off into that Green River
and…boy,
I ran up there and peeped over to see if he was going to come up.
(Laughing!)
Eighty years old! And he come up
and went to swimming just like
the
rest of them…having a lot of fun. Of
course, he didn’t stay in as long as
they
did.
That
was a swimming hole! They had been
coming there for a long time. It
was
a good place and real deep, and the rock hung right out over the water.
You
could dive right off. It was in the
summertime. I know we stopped and
looked
at all the corn they had…it was in the river bottom, and rich land. It
was
hot. I can’t remember too much about
him, because I wasn’t around him
enough.”
In another taped interview about two
years later on March 5, 1978, my dad expanded a little more on this same story:
“Grandpa Cox lived with us after
Aunt Pru died. I can’t remember his
first wife, who was my grandmother, but he
remarried, and we just called her Aunt Pru. And when she died, well, we went to Rosine...right
up there where Loretta
(meaning Loretta Westerfield, my grandfather’s niece, who was the daughter of
Cinderella) lives, and got all his things. And he come to live with us awhile… until he
got over his…you know, sorrow. I guess
he stayed with us three or four months.
I know it was springtime when we went up there. And it seems like it was along in the fall
when he moved, and I can’t recall who he went to, but I think he went down to
Uncle Orlando’s.”
My dad’s memory is fairly accurate
here, because Aunt Pru died in February 1916, and my dad would have been about
six years old, going on seven, but it would have been summer instead of fall
when his grandpa moved back home. His
marriage to Ann Simpson in June that year was probably more for convenience to
both of them, but for him especially, since he was seventy-eight, and she was
twenty-two years his junior. In the end,
he outlived four wives.
~.~
Mary Elizabeth (Mitchell) Cox had
only been married to John Rummel seven years when she died from pneumonia at
age fifty-nine in Obion County,
Tennessee on February 7,
1903. A little over a year later, back
home in Ohio County, her father, Joseph Martin
Mitchell died November 27, 1904. He was
buried at McCord Cemetery,
beside his wife Susannah Caroline (Acton)
Mitchell, who preceded him in death by twenty-six years.
In the 1900 census, John and Mary E.
Rummel were shown living in Household No. 103 in the Magisterial District of
Hartford, Ohio County. He was listed as
age fifty-two, born June 1847, in Kentucky
with both parents born in Kentucky.
Mary E. was listed as age fifty-six,
born June 1845, with both parents born in Kentucky.
Living with them, listed as a “boarder” was Ira C. Cox, son of Mary
Elizabeth and James William Cox. Both
had timber jobs and occupations for John Rummel and Ira Clinton Cox were listed
as “day laborer.”
No record of Mary Elizabeth’s
burial has been found and no monument has been located there in Obion County, Tennessee. Hopefully, a child’s or grandchild’s Bible,
or perhaps an old letter, will turn up one day that contains this information.
~.~
My grandfather’s niece, Loretta
Westerfield, daughter of Cinderella (Cox) Crowder, told me in a letter written
Monday, October 27, 1975:
“John Rummel, by profession, was
a “tie-hack,” an expert on hacking ties; he went wherever he heard of a big
timber job. Can’t remember, maybe never
knew, his native state. They went from
here to Tennessee. Uncle Ira went with them, also Adrian
Stewart, Aunt Mary’s son. They were
there when she was buried at Obion,
Tennessee. Uncle John Henry
Stewart, went from here to represent the family. A very sad occasion.
“Adrian told me he saw him, Mr. Rummel, in Illinois years later, and
Uncle Netter, who taught school in Arkansas, felt sure he had a daughter of his
as a pupil. But never learned first-hand
for sure. Her last name was Rummel and
she had some of his characteristics. Pneumonia
was the cause of Grand-mother’s death.”
My grandfather, Jasper Newton, was
away in the army at the time his mother died, but he told me that one of the
family members went to attend his mother’s funeral. According to Loretta’s letter, it may have
been Uncle John Henry Stewart, husband of Susanah “Susie” (Cox), who went to
represent the family. It was quite a
long way to travel at the time, and the trip most likely was made by train.
~.~
James William Cox, the son of true
pioneer parents and grandparents, outlived his fourth wife, Anna M. Simpson, by
eight years. By the time of his death, he had lived through twenty-three
presidents, and had spent all his life within the county of his birth.
He died at age ninety-three, on
September 30, 1931 at Equality, Ohio
County, while visiting or
living with the family of his fourth son and tenth child, Orlando Clay Cox. He was buried in the Smallhous
Cemetery, adjacent to the Smallhous Baptist Church,
not far from Centertown and Equality. The paper at Centertown noted his death:
“Oct
16, 1931 – James W. Cox. father of Ira and O. C., died at O. C.’s home
on 9/25 of cancer.”
Another obituary in the Ohio County News gave much more
additional information about Jim Cox, as well as the surviving members of his
family, and reads:
~.~.~~
JAMES W. COX
Passes at Age
of 93 Years
------
Teacher in Earlier Life;
Eight Children Survive Him
James W. Cox, 93 years of age, died Wednesday afternoon at the home of his son, O. C. Cox of Equality, as
the results of complications of old age and pneumonia.
Mr. Cox lived for many years in the Select neighborhood and was a member
of the Select Christian Church. In
earlier life he taught school, many people in this county and elsewhere having
received their education under him.
Later he was a farmer and a blacksmith.
Mr. Cox was married to Mary E. Mitchell of the Dundee
community. He was a brother to the late
Dr. L. T. Cox of Owensboro. Eight children survive him: four sons, T. J.,
Route 2, Beaver Dam; O. C. and I. C. of Equality, and J. N. of Texas; four daughters, Mrs. Birch Shields, Beaver
Dam, Mrs. H. T. Crowder, Rosine, Mrs. M. E. Crawford of Cromwell, Route 1, and Mrs. Mae Hocker of Topeka, Kansas.
Funeral services were held
at the Smallhous church, Wednesday afternoon at three o’clock, and burial was
in the cemetery there.
~~.~.~~
~.~
NOTE: This article is Part VI of several. It was written by Janice Cox Brown, an expert genealogy researcher whose ancestry is from Ohio County. Janice now lives in Texas. We thank her for her work and her desire to share her family research.
