In the summer of 2014, two people began an email conversation after learning that both were searching for ancestors named Cox who had been born in Halifax County, Virginia, in the mid-1700’s. One, Steve Cox, had an ancestor named Samuel Cox, b. 1770, in Halifax County, Virginia, and the other, Allice Reynolds, was searching for ancestors of who she believed to be brothers, Phineas, b. 1764 and John P., b. 1758, Cox. Samuel’s family had eventually migrated to northeastern Tennessee, while the two brothers had gone to Nashville, Tennessee, then to Warren County, Kentucky. Both Steve and Allice had additional genealogical information from others who had searched, but the information was sketchy and questionable.
Steve completed a Y-DNA test with FTDNA, and within a few weeks, found a match with a person he had not known. In checking, he learned that the man was deceased, but that his wife (name withheld by request) was carrying the project forward. She had only recently received a three ring binder of research that suggested her husband was a descendant of a William Cox, and some thought there was a connection to a Phineas Cox. The group quickly learned that there was indeed a paper trail that led back to the same Phineas Cox that Allice was researching.
Allice had also been in conversation with a cousin who was a descendant of John P. Cox about having a Y-DNA test, and she soon found a cousin descended from Phineas who consented to also test. By the end of 2014, the group had determined through Y-DNA that Phineas, John P. and Samuel were all related, and that it appeared that Phineas and John P. were more closely related to each other than to Samuel. That was as the paper trail had suggested.
Steve and Allice began to seek other testers to help confirm the various family lines. Within a short time, Allice had uncovered three testers who believed they were descended from Phineas Cox, b. 1764, and two others who believed they were descended from John P. Cox, b. 1758. Several of these people knew each other, and, based on Genealogical evidence and migration patterns, assumed that Phineas and John P. were brothers.
Steve found a second tester who was descended from the Samuel Cox, b. 1770, and he had the results of another person who had tested a few years earlier with ancestry.com, who believed he was descended from Thomas Cox, b. 1762 (His family thought Thomas was a son of Charles Cox and Ida Bennett).
The results of another tester at FTDNA were added when he matched the group. He only knew he was descended from a William Cox, b. 1773, in South Carolina. All of these testers carry the last name of Cox.
Along the way, three other testers with different last names were added to the group because of their results, but it is yet to be determined how they fit into the family.
In the summer of 2016, a person with a genealogical pedigree tracing back to Phillip Cox, b. 1677, and his wife, Dorcas Hull, was asked to take a Y-DNA test. The request was because others in the group had begun to put together enough genealogical information to suspect they might be descendants of Phillip. However, they believed they descended from a different son of Phillip. If they came close to matching the new tester, it would create a clear line back to the same common ancestor. In the meantime, the group of testers had compiled a predicted Y-DNA of the original common ancestor by comparing the results to each other. When the new tester’s results came back, he matched the predicted Y-DNA of the original ancestor on 109 of 111 markers. He was a more distant match to all of the other testers. There was no doubt that he shared a common ancestor with others in the group. The most logical answer was Phillip Cox. For it to be another person would require undoing all the genealogical evidence compiled by both him and the test group.
That served as confirmation that Phillip Cox and Dorcas Hull are the common ancestors shared by all in this test group. Left unanswered by the Y-DNA test is how some of the descendants of Phillip and Dorcas ended up in Halifax County, Virginia, then northeastern Tennessee (descendants of Samuel Cox, b. 1770), or Warren County, Kentucky (Phineas and John P. Cox). That was resolved with genealogical evidence available in a different article.
Late in 2016, another tester joined the group as a strong match. He had traced his ancestry to a Samuel Cox, b. abt 1797, and Charity Manning. Samuel was born in Kentucky, according to census records, and had lived in Lauderdale County, Alabama, as an adult. His Y-DNA indicated that he shared a more recent common ancestor with descendants of Phineas and John P. Cox.
In 2017, additional testers joined the group. Two were descendants of Jacob Cox, one from his son, Samuel, and the other from his son, Thomas (mentioned above). The latter had never had evidence of his connection to Thomas or Thomas’ ancestors prior to the test. However, his earliest known ancestor was named Jacob, was born in 1788, lived in the area of Thomas, and married a woman whose family had neighbored with Thomas. Steve Cox had already postulated that this Jacob was part of Thomas’ family. The Y-DNA put the stories together and confirmed the connection. Yet another tester had a genealogical paper trail that traced him back to Phillip through his son Phillip, giving the group two independent verifications with this specific set of ancestors. Another person with the Cox surname was added to the group, though his Y-DNA most closely matched those who descend from Samuel Addison White.
In 2018, another person contacted Steve Cox because he had heard about the group, and thought he might be descended from the Phillip Cox, b. 1757, who was another son of Jacob Cox. Steve encouraged him to do the Y-DNA test, and his results were exactly as expected. He was a very close match with others descending from Jacob, matching one in the group on 110 of 111 markers.
Later in 2018, Steve Cox found a person who was tracing to the Ritchie County, West Virginia, line of Coxes and encouraged him to test. The result came back as confirmation that his paper trail agreed with the predicted Y-DNA established in this group. He had 37 markers tested with only one mutation from the predicted Phillip Cox Y-DNA.
Early in 2019, another match appeared at the testing site. The new match appears to be a closer relative to those who are descended from Jacob Cox; however, his family has only been able to trace his line back to a Josiah (Joseph) Cox, who was born in Indiana in about 1827. He matches on 108 of 111 markers with the predicted Y-DNA of Phillip Cox, and one of those mutations is shared by descendants of Jacob Cox and no others in the group. There are no obvious choices of the known children of Jacob, so this could be a clue that leads to a child that has not yet been discovered, or it could be that the Y-DNA is not telling the whole story. It is an intriguing area for research! One intriguing possibility is that he descends from Jacob to Samuel to Samuel’s son, John. A letter written to Coleman Cox, brother of John in 1827 suggests that John had had a child in the spring of that year who had not yet been named. Some of the Cox family had moved to Indiana for a few months in 1826, but it seems unlikely that John and his pregnant wife would have gone there to visit. No one has previously recorded a name for that child or appears to have known of his/her existence, so it may not have survived. Josiah was living in Jasper County, Iowa in 1847. There are three other adult men listed with property at that time who are named Cox (A.S., William P., and Daniel) but none of them are obvious choices to be related. Josiah may have left his family, arriving in Jasper County on his own. It appears that he probably met his wife, Julia Maggard, after arriving in Iowa. They were married in 1848. All we know for sure is that his ancestors descend from Phillip Cox and Dorcas Hull, and it appears most likely that they descend from Phillip’s son, John.
In June of 2020, another Y-DNA tester joined the group. He was already known to be a descendant of Jacob Cox through his son, Samuel, and Samuel’s son, John. It was hoped he would provide helpful information regarding Josiah Cox since both might come from the same ancestor. However, he matched the predicted Y-DNA for Phillip Cox on 110 of 111 markers, missing only with the same mutation that all except one of Jacob’s children share. The mutations that belong in Josiah’s descendants apparently came more recently, or perhaps through an unknown son of Jacob.
There are, or course, others who are testing Y-DNA who do not match with this group. One such group traces to a Cox family that was in Orange County, Virginia, before some migrated to Halifax County, Virginia. Based on genealogical information, it appears that the John Cox who married Mary Ferguson was from this family line. If the genealogical information is accurate, then John Cox and Mary Ferguson do not represent the biological ancestry for Samuel Cox, b. 1770. Others have postulated that Samuel is a descendant (grandchild) of John Cox and Mary Harlan, who were in Pennsylvania, but there are several testers from that family line, and they are not matches with this group. We have not yet found any descendants of Charles Cox and Ida Bennett, also in Halifax County, Virginia, in the same time period, but there is no evidence suggesting any connection to that family.
The group continues to seek new testers who can help verify relationships, particularly from other lines of the extended family.