CoxUSA

Edward Travers Cox

From: Nowland, John H. B. Sketches of Prominent Citizens of 1876, with a Few of the Pioneers of the City and County Who Have Passed Away. Indianapolis: Tilford & Carlon, Printers, 1877. An expansion of Nowland’s 1870 Early Reminiscences.

Edward Travers Cox

 

Was born April 22, 1821, in Culpepper county, Virginia. His mother died in 1824 and left his father, Edward Cox, with seven small children. About this time the celebrated Robert Owen – the father of Robert Dale Owen – came to America for the purpose of promulgating his “new views of society,” and establishing a community of common interests, sometimes designated as the social system – a co-operative society on a large scale. Mr. Owen purchased the town of New Harmony, in Posey county, Indiana, together with large tracts of adjoining farm lands, of George Rapp, who was at the head of a community of Germans known as Harmonists. New Harmony is situated on a second bottom of the Wabash river, sixty miles above its junction with the Ohio and fifty miles below Vincennes. A range of low hills, here cut in two by the northward for many miles, leaving a broad river valley. Mr. Rapp was attracted to the locality on account of the beauty, fine timber, rich farming lands and the advantages afforded for manufacturing with a water-power supplied by the cut-off, an arm of the Wabash which puts out from the main stream just below town. When Mr. Owen purchased the place it contained many buildings, a woolen factory, cotton factory, large water-power grist mill, linseed oil factory and a hat factory. The lands were in a fine state of cultivation, numerous apple, peach, pear, plum, and cherry orchards were in full-bearing, extensive vineyards were cultivated, and wine and fruit brandies were articles entering extensively into the commerce of the place.

 

The father of E. T. Cox, the subject of our sketch, was a mechanic, though he had been engaged for many years in the milling business, and was at one period of his life an agent for Thomas Jefferson, who entrusted him with the management of important business. It may also be added that he was a soldier in the war of 1812 and held the rank of lieutenant at the battle of Yorktown. Finding himself left with a large family of small children which it was necessary to educate, he was struck with the many advantages Robert Owen presented to the members of his community for education, since it was to form its keystone; the mottoes on his banner were: “Ignorance is the fruitful cause of human misery,” “If we can not reconcile all opinions, let us endeavor to unite all hearts.” He also attended one of Mr. Owen’s lectures at Richmond, and soon after resolved upon moving to New Harmony. The Alleghenies were crossed in wagons. From Wheeling the journey was made in a flat-boat to Cincinnati, where the winter of 1824 was spent; in the spring he proceeded down the river in a flat-boat in company with several other families, who were also going to join the community at New Harmony. All arrived safely at Mount Vernon, on the Ohio river, the present seat of Posey, and fifteen miles from New Harmony. From this place the journey was finished in wagons. It was on the 28^th day of May, 1825, that the subject of this sketch first beheld the town of New Harmony, which was to be his future home, and child though he was, the impression which the scene made upon him will never fade from his memory. The orchards were all in bloom and the entire valley which burst upon view of the emigrant, from the top of the hill just before descending to the town, looked like one vast flower garden.

 

Through the community was supplied with good schools, and teacher eminent for their learning, the youth only four years of age was unable to profit by the advantages they afforded. The community was dissolved inside of two years, and the town was soon after deprived of the school system which Mr. Owen and William Maclure were trying to establish. Mr. Godwin Volney Dorsey, a young man of exemplary habits and good scholarly attainments, opened a subscription school and afforded the only opportunity which fell to the lot of E. T. Cox for acquiring an education. In 1832 Mr. Dorsey moved to Ohio and the town was deprived of his excellent school.

 

At the age of thirteen the subject of our sketch obtained a situation in a dry goods store, and from thence forward continued to earn his own living, and during moments of leisure from business occupied the time in reading scientific books, histories and general literature, with a view of preparing himself for a scientific pursuit. In 1848 he married Miss Eliza A. Sampson, eldest daughter of James and Eliza Sampson, residents of New Harmony from the time of the community. His father died in 1850. Of his five brothers all grew to manhood. William died in 1840, John died in 1850, Thomas, the youngest, died in 1851, of cholera, while on his way to California with his family. He possessed a musical voice, and was noted for his fine reading and admirable elocutionary powers. The late Robert Dale Owen said of his recitation, in an article published in the New York Evening Post, that it was in a “style and manner Kean would have envied.” Of his Shakespearean reading the same authority pronounced it second only to Mrs. Siddons’. James P. Cox died in Ghent, Kentucky, in 1856, so that there are only two of this large family now living, the subject of our sketch and his widowed sister, Sarah Jane Thrall, who is living at New Harmony.

 

In 1854 Prof. Cox received the appointment of assistant geologist in the geological survey of Kentucky, from Dr. David Dale Owen, and continued in this survey for three years, during which time he made himself acquainted with the general character of the geology of the State by visiting every county in it.

 

Dr. Owen was appointed State geologist of Arkansas in 1857, and Prof. Cox was then transferred to that State, where he served as principal assistant up to 1860, when the civil war put a stop to the survey. Following this period he was employed on a great many surveys for private individuals and companies, which enabled him to extend his geological researches from the Appalachian to the Rocky mountains. In 1867 he was employed on the Illinois survey until the spring of 1869, when he was appointed State Geologist of Indiana by Governor Conrad Baker, in which position he still continues to serve the State. In 1873 he was appointed by the Legislature and commissioned by Governor Hendricks as commissioner for the State of Indiana to the world’s fair at Vienna. In 1876 he was appointed to make a display of the mineral and agricultural products of Indiana at the centennial exhibition and was a member of the group of judges. Of the work he has accomplished and its importance to the State the people are to be the judges.

 

The results of the survey are published in seven volumes, and the eight is now in preparation for the press. Previous to the publication of these reports but little attention had been given to the mineral resources of the State. He does not claim to have been the first to discover coal in Indiana, for this important mineral was found here by Colonel Crogan in 1763, for some years before it was known to exist in Pennsylvania and the boundary and area of the coal field was very accurately determined by Dr. David Dale Owen in 1837, but does claim to have been the first to give an accurate sequence of the coal strata and to make known to the world, in a satisfactory manner, its true value as a fuel and its adaptability to all kinds of metallurgical processes, and especially its application to the smelting of iron ores and the manufacture of steel.

 

Prof. Cox is not only a geologist of large experience acquired by personal surveys and explorations extending over a period of more than twenty-four years, but he is likewise a practical analytical chemist, having obtained a knowledge of this important adjunct to the geologist by eight years of analytical labor in the extensive and well appointed laboratory of Dr. David Dale Owen at New Harmony.

 

It is with no little pride that in looking back over the many geological opinions he has been called upon to give, some of which involved the expenditure of large sums of money, there has not been and instance where the parties who sought his professional advice could say that he had deceived them. He is in good standing with the geologists at home and abroad, and bears the reputation of being an accurate geological observer. Of five children, one son and four daughters, three died while infants. The third daughter married Dr. A. D. Jones, now of Newport, Kentucky, but only lived a few months to enjoy her happiness. The fourth and youngest is living and grown to womanhood.

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