By Steve Cox,
manager@embersoftheflame.com
There has been an ongoing dispute over whether Dorcas was from the Graves or Hull family. It appears that the Graves name first appeared when at attempt was made to tie the Cox family to a more well-known family. However, the evidence supports Hull.
On December 6, 1731, Philip Cox and Dorcas Co sold land in York County, Maine, to Pendleton Fletcher. The 60 acres had first been granted to Phineas Hull on December 3, 1681, and it was assigned to Dorcas Cox and Philip Cox on November 5, 1731. In this record, it is Dorcas who is listed first, and they state their residence as East Jersey in the county of Somerset. Earlier in these records, Philip Cox gives his son, Philip Cox, power of attorney to act on his behalf, on August 20, 1731. He says this is in regard to any land for “me or Dorcas my wife late (Dorcas Hull)…”
In addition, Philip is a witness to a Will for John Dennis in 1702, along with Nicholas Munday, Jr. Other family trees report both Nicholas and John to have married women named Hull, and apparently from the same family. These family trees have not been verifeid by me, but they were created by parties who were not interested in proving the relationships among the three men.
Descendants of Phillip and Dorcas kept a family Bible that not only carries the names of the birthdates of their children, but also suggests the Bible once belonged to Jerusha Hitchcock. There is ample evidence in records from Maine that tell us that Phineas Hull was married to Jerusha Hitchcock
This leaves little room for doubt as to the family background of Dorcas Hull Cox. We can’t prove that Dorcas did not first marry a person by the name of Graves before marrying Phillip Cox; however, she was clearly a Hull at birth, which negates the argument for the Graves family and leaves no reason to consider an earlier marriage. Certainly, her family Bible does not include the names of any children born prior to marrying Phillip.
We don’t have precise birthdate information for Dorcas, but it would have been prior to her mother’s death in 1689. It is probably closer to 1680. Neither do we have a record of her death, but we know it to be later than 1736 when she served as an executor for Phillip Cox’s Will.
Dorcas’ family lines were among the earliest settlers of New England. Her grandfather, Rev. Joseph Hull brought a group of 106 people from England to what is now Weymouth, Massachusetts, in 1635. They were in search of religious freedom, though the new parishioners were apparently stricter than their pastor. Rev. Hull had trouble staying in one parish. Dorcas’s father, Phineas was born in the colonies and died in 1693, probably as a result of a conflict with Native Americans. Dorcas’ mother’s paternal line arrived in New England a year earlier than the Hulls. Richard Hitchcock, father of Jerusha, arrived in 1634, settling in Saco, Maine until his death in 1671. Jerusha’s mother was Lucretia Williams, daughter of Thomas Williams, who was in Boston as early as 1631. Jerusha was born in late 1653 and is said by some to have died in 1689, though we have not seen evidence of that. It is possible that she was taken into captivity by Native Americans in 1690 and released in 1691, which would suggest a later death, but that is disputed. There are no known brothers or sisters of Dorcas, though there would have been time for additional siblings to be born.
Following Jerusha’s death, some have said that Phineas married Mary Rishworth White Sayward who was from a family that was close friends with the Hitchcocks. This would have been no earlier than 1690, and with Phineas dying in 1693, it would have been a short marriage. There are records indicating that Mary used the surname Hull in 1690-91, but no proof that Phineas was her husband.
Dorcas would have needed to live under the care of another family. We next find her when she marries Phillip Cox in about 1702, in New Jersey. We know that she had uncles Samuel, Benjamin, and Hopewell Hull who had moved to New Jersey many years earlier. Hopewell is the oldest uncle, but Samuel was nearest in age to Phineas, Dorcas’ father. Samuel used naming conventions that best match children and grandchildren of Dorcas, but Benjamin’s name is also used for a grandchild. A guess is that Dorcas moved to live with her Hull cousins following her father’s death; however a case could be made for any of the three families of Samuel, Benjamin, or Hopewell to have raised her.