Joseph M Cox

JOSEPH COX’s birth came in Montgomery county, Ohio on 25 February 1815. He lived there until he was eleven. As a lad, his family sent him to a subscription school where he obtained a limited education. This education ended when they moved west to the frontier. Joseph and his father Jonathan Cox came to Warren County, Indiana in 1826. They started with only a team of oxen. The family would face many difficulties associated with being a pioneer. They would take untamed land and make it to fields. This is backbreaking work. When Joseph grew up, like most in his time, he became a farmer. Over the years his farm grew. It would eventually grow to 207 acres. His wife, children and he were active members of the United Brethren Church in Independence. United Brethren today is a small denomination with only 47,000 members. In the late 1880’s it had 200,000 members. It is found mainly in the area from Pennsylvania to Illinois. By reading a bit about the United Brethren, we can understand a little what Joseph must have been like. They had some radical view for their time about women and blacks. The United Brethren began in 1767, and an inter-denominational renewal movement was sweeping through the colonies. In that period, Christians would gather in what they called “Great Meetings.” These were lively affairs. Several hundred people from all over might spend several days hearing a string of stirring speakers. Isaac Long hosted a Great Meeting at his big barn in Lancaster, Pa. Martin Boehm, a Mennonite preacher, told his story of becoming a Christian and a minister. It deeply moved William Otterbein, a German Reformed pastor. Otterbein left his seat, embraced Boehm, and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Wir sind bruder.” These meetings were held in German and Otterbein’s words meant, “We are brethren.” Out of this revival movement came a new denomination, and it took its name from Otterbein’s words: United Brethren in Christ. The early movement spread to include a number of German speaking churches in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio. In time, the loose movement saw the need for organization. In 1800, they began holding a yearly conference for business and inspiration. The United Brethren church has the distinction of being the first denomination to actually begin in the United States. Other denominations existed at the time (Lutheran, Reformed, Mennonite, and others), but they were transplants from Europe. The United Brethren church was truly Made in America. Though the language of the church began as German in later became English. In the 1700s, German immigrants accounted for one-third of Pennsylvania’s population, and nearly everyone spoke German in the state’s south-central counties (Lancaster, York and others), where the church started. As German immigrants moved west, so did the church. But around 1815, English began overtaking German. The most famous United Brethren was Francis Scott Key, who wrote “The Star Spangled Banner” during a War of 1812 battle. He was a United Brethren Sunday school teacher. The early ministers were mostly farmers who traveled around preaching in their spare time, without pay. A preacher would travel for hours over rugged terrain on horseback getting to just one meeting He might oversee 30 churches spread over two counties. Between visits by the preacher a “lay leader” would be in charge of the church. The day the preacher came was always special and eagerly-awaited. Big crowds would gather for the service, and many people might commit their lives to Christ. These highly-committed circuit-riding preachers served at great sacrifice. The church grew rapidly under their leadership. By 1815 they began to pay the preachers. The pay was not enough to live on so many pastors were also farmers. Most pastoral preparation occurred on-the-job. When a person expressed interest in becoming a minister, they were promptly given a church--or more likely, a whole circuit of churches. No classes on sermon preparation or theology. It was said of the United Brethren ministers, “The preachers were lame in philosophy, and knew nothing of the higher criticism, but on the cardinal doctrines of the gospel they were giants. They would preach on the judgment and future rewards or punishments until one would think the day had come.” A minister with college education were viewed with suspicion, because they might rely more on their learning than on God. Now an interesting note was how they treated women and blacks. In the 1800s, they started a number of colleges. Unlike most other colleges at the time, all admitted women. And Otterbein College in Ohio did something unheard of: opened its doors to blacks. (The college president’s home was a station on the Underground Railroad, which helped slaves escape.) In 1821, forty years before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the church took a strong stand against slavery. The church people who owned slaves had two choices: set them free, or let the church decide how long the slave had to work to compensate the master for his “investment.” But in no case could a member sell a slave. Until the mid-1800s, they did not have many church buildings. For instance, Virginia, home to some of the earliest congregations, had just three church buildings in 1850. An Ohio conference, after 40 years, had just one church building. Meetings were held in homes, barns, schools, or outdoors. But later as congregations erected buildings, they believed that, “all our meeting houses be built plainly and neatly, with free seats, and not more expensive than necessary.” Churches couldn’t build until they’d raised two-thirds of the cost of the structure. Now Joseph was born a Quaker, but his family left the faith. They did come an area in which a number of the members of The Society of Friends (Quakers) were settling. To be a Quaker, you had to marry a Quaker. They did not. In 1839, his two sisters and one brother were disowned for marrying out of the faith. At this time Joseph was also disowned but they did not state the reason. Sarah, his first wife, had ties to the Quakers so I do not know if they could have used that as the reason to disown to him. In the 1870 Census Joseph had his son-in-law William Harvey and his daughter Harriet living next door. It appears that William worked on the farm with him. The value of Joseph’s land was $1940 and his personal property was worth $500. William had no land but the value of his personal belongings were $600. In his life, Joseph would marry three times. The first marriage was to SARAH HINSHAW with whom he had several children including our ancestor HARRIET COX. After being made a widower, he would remarry a Celia (an older woman). It was only a few years later that Celia died in 1895. He would than remarry a Sallie Johnson who was much younger than him (she was 49 when they married). She out lived him. It was 25 March 1901 when Joseph died. He had pneumonia. They buried him in Independence. He was 86 years old.

GEDCOM Source

@R-2146016482@ Public Member Trees Ancestry.com Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006.Original data - Family trees submitted by Ancestry members.Original data: Family trees submitted by Ancestry members. This information comes from 1 or more individual Ancestry Family Tree files. This source citation points you to a current version of those files. Note: The owners of these tree files may have removed or changed information since this source citation was created. Ancestry Family Trees http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=4775649&pid=...