The Cox Family in Boone County

I will be talking about the Cox family in Boone County, Indiana, but I don’t have photos of that family from earlier in the 1800s.  This photo is of the George Henry Hine and Susan G. Stanbrough family from 1892.  All of them were born in Indiana, but in Hamilton County.  If you’ve read all of my blog posts carefully, you would know who everyone is in the photo and how they are connected to the Cox family.  Let me go ahead and tell you.  Be prepared for a written test at a later date!

This photo has been posted before by my 2nd cousin Joseph.  He and his mom Louise have generously shared many photos with me and this is one of them.  There is also another photo that I’ve posted of this family from around the same time.  But in the other one, they’re just standing in front of their log cabin home.  This time they fancied it up with a backdrop.  Actually there are two backdrops.  It’s kind of funny because you can see that they just tacked up two blankets behind them and it doesn’t actually hide the exterior wall of the house they were trying to hide.

I edited this photo to clean it up a bit.  I could have cropped it and cloned portions to make the backdrop do what was intended, but that would have taken away from the charm of this photo.  In the back row you see Lonnie, Rowe, Addie (my maternal grandfather’s mother), and Bert.  In the front row are George, Ollie, and Sue.  To the far right is Jim Hine.  Addie was the firstborn with five younger brothers.  They were all about 2 years apart with Addie being born in 1876.

I’m sure you’re wondering why this family moved from Hamilton County to Boone County.  I am, too.  I don’t know the exact reason, but I do know that George’s mother’s family had lived there for about sixty years when this photo was taken.  His mother’s name was Mary Malina Cox and she was the wife of John Peter Hine.  Before that, she was the daughter of Benjamin Cox and Jemima Vestal.

Benjamin Cox married Jemima Vestal some time around 1816 in North Carolina, possibly in Randolph County.  Both of them were born in North Carolina.  Their first child was a son that they named Thomas in 1817.  He was named for Benjamin’s father.  They then had a daughter named Lavina in 1821.  Mary Malina was next in line and she was born in March of 1822.  Following her Asa was born in 1824 and John was born in 1826.  So what do they decide to do three years later?  They decided to make a move with their young family.

Transportation in 1829 in North Carolina was difficult within the state.  But Benjamin and Jemima decided that they were going to be settlers in Indiana, which was about 600 miles away!  The only way to get there would be to cross a few states on a covered wagon.  I wish I knew the details of that journey.  Once they arrived it was basically wilderness with a few trading posts around.  Benjamin did get a plot of land on April 3, 1829.  Boone County wasn’t an official county until the following year.

After getting settled in Indiana, the family continued to grow with daughter Amy born in 1833, son William born in 1836, and daughter Mary born in 1838.  According to census records Benjamin was a farmer.  Jemima died in December of 1843 and nine months later Benjamin remarried.  He did not have any children with his second wife.

I found an interesting mention of Benjamin Cox in a book about Boone County.  It talks about him being one of the early settlers of the area and how he had to travel a ways to get his milling done during the early years.  He would travel with his mule team over rough roads and it would take more than a week to accomplish his task.  Along the way he’d spend the nights serenaded by bullfrogs.  No running water, no electricity, and no bed to sleep in was standard fare.  

He was alive when that book was written in 1874, but he died a few years later on July 29, 1877.  I found his will a few years ago and it lists all of his children who were alive at the time.  The youngest daughter Mary had died in 1858 at the age of 19.  Malina Hines is listed as an heir.  Her son George was 30 years old at the time.  Actually, my great grandmother Addie had been born a few months before he died.

What I find really interesting about that last statement is that I was born the month before Addie died.  It’s like we were bookends to her life.  For some reason I feel like I have a personal link to my great great great great grandfather Benjamin Cox who was born in 1796.  Now I too am a part of the Cox family of Boone County.