Caswell Sharp Cox, the son of Coleman Cox and Roxanna Foster Cox, was born November 10, 1839, in Union County, Tennessee. He spent his entire life in Union County, near Maynardville, marrying a local girl, Annie Hazeltine Salling on September 24, 1868. Caswell died on March 3, 1921, and is buried in the Milan Baptist Church Cemetery, which is south of Maynardville and near the Union and Knox County line.
Though Caswell would have been the right age to serve one side or the other during the Civil War, there is no record that he served. After the war, he was a business owner where he and his brother, John, had a livery and mercantile store on the northeast side of town in Maynardville. In the 1870’s, John sold the business without Caswell’s knowledge and quickly left town. The reason was never passed down in the family, but recent DNA evidence suggests that John may have been leaving town to escape responsibility for a child he had fathered.
We have wondered about the reason Caswell got both his first and middle names, but have found no definitive answer. There was a Caswell County, North Carolina, that was near where Coleman and Roxanna lived before returning to Union County, but that doesn’t offer a strong rationale. The middle name of Sharp may have simply come from a neighboring family. As it turns out, Caswell’s son, Andrew, married a girl whose grandmother’s maiden name was Sharp.
Caswell was the seventh of nine children born to Coleman and Roxanna. Cox. Six of the 9 kids were boys. At the end of his life, Caswell live with his youngest son, Samuel Jacob Cox
Annie Salling was born December 4, 1848, the daughter of Joseph Edward Salling and Nancy Jane McPhetridge (Some say her first name was Vera). She died on December 22, 1895, at the age of 47, and with two children still under the age of 10. She is buried next to Caswell at the Milan Baptist Cemetery in Union County, Tennessee. We do not have a significant amount of information about her.
Caswell and Annie had 11 children between the years of 1869 and 1889, six boys and five girls. There is more information about several of the children in other sections of this website.