Orville Sutherland Cox

Orville Sutherland Cox, 1814 - 1888, age 73, was born 25 November 1814, at Plymouth, Chenango County, N.Y. to Jonathan and Lucinda Cox. 1830: "Orville Sutherland Cox was sixteen years old. Two accounts have been written of Orville's early life, one by Adelia B. Cox Sidwell and the other by O. C. Day. There were some variations in the accounts. The problem of the writer has been to sift fact from guess. The method in the sifting has been to use Uncle Gus's statement as fact and accept the data the would fit. The testing of the story has also been done with maps of the area. After his father's death, Orville was apprenticed to Deacon Jones to learn the blacksmith trade. Orville was large for his age and an apt learner. It was agreed that Orville should be sent to school three months out of each year. Orville was to stay and work obediently until he was twenty-one. No schooling was given however, and Orville said that only one pair of trousers were supplied during the three years he stayed with the deacon. The deacon's wife kept cows, but would give Orville no milk, "a beverage which he loved," because she said, "it would make too big a hole in the cheese." At first Orville was kept blowing the bellows and using the heavy tongs. Later he was allowed some free-dom. The deacon sometimes went a distance to visit some parish. Orville used the tools and practiced some of the things that he saw this master do. During some of these hours of freedom, he made himself a pair of skates from pieces of broken nails that he had gathered and carefully saved. He straightened a dis-carded gun barrel and made a hammer, trigger and sights for it. These things he kept hidden from the eyes of his master and associates. "At times oxen were brought to the shop to be shod that had extremely hard hoofs." When the deacon undertook to drive nails into the "glassy hoofs" he kept bending the nails. Nails were a precious article in those days and must not be discarded. Cox straightened the nails over and over. Finally the young man said, "letme" and he shod the ox without bending a single nail. Thereafter, Cox shod all the oxen that were brought to the shop. (Chap. III, p. 39-40) "At the blacksmith shop Orville's associates called him "Deek," and reference to the deacon was distasteful. 1833, Feb.: "After three years, he decided to run away. (Chap. III, p. 41) "The following is from the biography by his daughter, Adelia: "Harsh treatment became irksome, and on one of the deacons distant parish visits, he gathered together his few belongings, a lunch, etc., and be-tween two days, he shouldered his meagre bundle of clothes and hit the trail for the tall timber, that being the least discoverable route. He hoofed it towards the Susquehanna River, arriving on the banks of the Tioga River -..." (Chap. III, p. 41) "On board this small steamboat, going north with a cargo of southern produce, he for the first time in his life saw an orange, part of the steamer's freight being citrus fruit. This little river packet took him a distance up the big river, where he landed and found lucrative employment at the lumber and logging camps, sometimes as assistant blacksmith at the forge. He considered himself lucky to find two of his brothers who were employed rafting (floating) logs down the river." (Chap. III, p. 41-42) If Orville S. Cox was bound out to Deacon Jones shortly before his father died, then he would be fifteen years old at the time. If he spent three years and left when then the dug-out canoe was frozen to the river bank, it would figure out to be February 1833 when he ran away to go home. Uncle Gus said that William, Walter, Orville and himself, floated a great raft of lumber down the Susquehanna for three hundred miles. At Harrisburg, Penn. they parted. Orville and Gus worked their way across the state to Pittsburg and from there to Nelson, Portage County, Ohio. (Chap. III, p. 42) 1838, late summer: "Letters came back from Missouri. ...It was the letters by Walter and Amos that influenced Orville to go west." "Sometime during the late summer or early autumn of 1838, Orville S. Cox became enthused by the stories in those letters from Missouri and went west to join his brothers, Walter and Amos." (Chap. III, part 3, p. 67) 1838: (Note: The Trail of Tears was happening through Arkansas and Missouri) "A few days after the imprisonment began, Sylvester Hulet was away from Far West on business. He met a man who was a stranger in those parts, having been in Missouri a very short time. In the course of the conversation, the man told that everywhere he went he heard talk of the Mormons and rejoicing that "Now they had the leaders of this gang of robber, thieves, murderous and traitors to the United States Government." The strangers heard that the Mormons had rebelled against the government, had a president of their own, had fortified their city and defied the state militia. Hulet was silent. Then the stranger asked if he knew anything about the Mormons. "Why yes, I know something about them. Would you like to go to their city and see it?" He asked. The stranger quickly assured Hulet that he would like to see the Mormon city very much. Hulet led the way and fell into silence again, until they came in sight of Far West when he again spoke. "There is the Mormon city, and there are the fortifications." The stranger looked and asked, "Where are the fortifications?" "Those few wagons loaded with lumber, and the pile of lumber and logs." Then the stranger threw back his head and opened his mouth and laughed as a Cox sometimes can laugh. For this was Orville S. Cox. He told Hulet that if the other stories had been stretched as much as the "fortification story" had, he would surely like to get acquainted with the Mormons. Then Hulet confessed that he was a Mormon and invited Cox to become his guest for as long a time as he liked, and as often as he liked. When this cheerful young man entered their home, Elvira at once became interested. His laugh that came so easily, his wit that flowed so readily, his sensible perception of the situation of the community, his ability to lend an ingenious helping hand to everyone around who needed help, won a friendly appreciation at once from others as well as Elvira. In turn he felt a strong liking for this distressed people, and decided that they were kindred spirits to him. Soon after he became acquainted at Far West, Orville learned that his older brother, Walter and others of his family, had accepted the Mormon faith and he soon decided that this religion was good enough for him. He asked Elvira to become his partner for life and she answered that if he would be baptized into her church, she would be glad to do so. To that proposition he did not react as she has expected he would. Instead of complying with her suggestion, he said that he didn't propose to join any religeous sect to buy a wife. But he remained his smiling good natured teasing self, so that no particular gloom or depression came over her life. He remained the genial friend of the Sylvester and family, and mingled with the saints in meetings, dances and all their gatherings." (Adelia Cox Sidwell - Life of Elvira P. M. Cox) (Chap. V, p. 93) "Speaking again of our families fleeing from Missouri, exactly who traveled in the company with whom was not recorded. Family tradition had it that Orville S. Cox helped the Hulet family to move out of Missouri. There were three families that had a total of sixteen people who pitched their tents together when they arrived in Hancock County (Illinois)." (Chap. V, p. 98) "Orville S. Cox helped to build the Morley Settlement." (His biography by Adelia) Sylvester Hulet lived in the Morley Settlement for a time because his niece, Alvira was there. Orville S. Cox asked Elvira to marry him. She liked his laugh that came so easily, his ready wit, his ability to lend an ingenious helping hand to everyone who needed help and his warm friendship to everyone. Elvira decided that Mormon or not he was the man for her. So it was on October 3rd, 1839 at her Uncle Elisha Whiting's home in Morley Settlement, Orville Sutherland Cox and Elvira Pamela Mills were married by Lyman Wight, the friend of the Hulet family in Jackson County, Missouri. Three days later, Orville was baptized by Joseph Smith, Jr. in Nauvoo. The newly weds made their home in the Morley Settlement near Lima, Illinois." (His biography by Adelia) (Chap. V, p. 100)