James F. Cox

    James F. Cox, attorney at law, was born in Monroe County, Indiana, May 15, 1852, and is a son of Rev. J. Bridgeman and Martha (Mosier) Cox. He was reared on a farm, attended the county schools, and when fifteen began his own support, and divided his time between labor and schooling. At nineteen, he became a teacher, and attended the State University for three years, after which he taught during winter and studied law during summer. He became an earnest politician before he became a voter. He cast his first vote, in pride, for Horace Greeley, and came before the Democratic convention as a candidate for Prosecuting Attorney of the Fifteenth Circuit. He was defeated meagerly after being nominated over three prominent competitors from this county, by a coalition of Greene and Owen Counties, the latter receiving the Judge and the former the Prosecutor, In 1878, he was made Deputy County Prosecuting Attorney, as which he served eighteen months before resigning to matriculate in the Law Department of the University of Michigan, from which he graduated March 24, 1880, and returned to this county and resumed practice.

    August 1, 1877, he married, in Brown County, Indiana, Miss Mattie E. Armstrong, who died February 14, 1880, leaving one child -Leon J.

Source: Counties of Morgan, Monroe and Brown, Indiana. Historical and Biographical. Charles Blanchard, Editor. F. A. Battey & Co., Publishers, 1884.