Jacob Cox is my 4th great grandfather. He was born in 1769 to Harmon and Jane John Cox. Jacob was the youngest of their ten children and was born when his parents were both in their forties.
He was just a toddler as his father was an active participant in the Regulator movement, and a teenager when the Harmon and Thomas Cox mills were routinely occupied by the locally despised Tory leader David Fanning. This must have been confusing at times growing up in a Quaker family.
He married my 4th great grandfather Hannah Moffitt on December 22, 1791 and the marriage was reported to the Holly Springs Friends and Cane Creek Friends Meetings. Hannah was the daughter of William Joseph Moffitt and Mary Davis Moffitt. (Hannah’s older sister, Catherine, married Elisha’s older brother, Nathan, in 1789.)
Jacob and Hannah had seven children in 24 years: Harmon (1791), Mary (1793), Rachel (1796), Hannah (1798), Jacob Jr. 1802, Nathan (1804), and Jane (1806).
Harmon willed Jacob land on “Polecat Creek,” shown on current Randolph County maps in the Randleman-Worthville area. (Jacob Jr. inherited the 104 acres on Polecat Creek. He is buried in Pleasant Garden, so I assume Polecat Creek is indeed one near Worthville.) Jacob also had land on Deep River, leaving to son Nathan “all the rest of my land on both sides of the creek to the River from the millford (sic) to the ‘Buffalowford’ (sic) mills and all smith tools.” I’m still unsure whether he was actively involved in operation of the mills, but do believe he passed to Nathan his knowledge for making brandy from the farm’s fruit tees.
I came across a reference to Jacob in a book by award winning author Manly Wade Wellman: Dead and Gone: Classic Crimes of North Carolina. In telling the story of Naomi Wise, Wellman describes the dangers of the early Randolph County backcountry for its settlers.
Riding home one day from market, he (Jacob Cox) was accosted by three highwaymen, who told him to stand and deliver. From under his coat he whipped a most un-Quakerly pistol, and the robbers fled from before its levelled muzzle. For this exploit he was read out of meeting by the Society of Friends and was not readmitted until he had grown old and, it may have been felt, full of good will even toward highway men. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Randolph farmers of all godly denominations were celebrated for the quantity and quality of the brandy they distilled from their peaches. Randolph County brandy was a ready seller at the market in Fayetteville.
Jacob died on October 10, 1838 at the age of 69. Hannah died four years later. I cannot find record of where they are buried, but feel it must be with the other Coxes in Mill Creek Friends Cemetery.
Sources of note:
Forebears and Kinfolks 