Biographical Sketch of Orville Southerland Cox, Pioneer of 1847
The Pioneer Spirit
The Pioneer Spirit that mastered things
And Broke the virgin sod,
That conquered savages and kings,
And only bowed to God.
The Strength of mind and strength of soul—
The will to do or die,
That sets its heart upon a goal,
And made it far or high—
—Clarence Hawkes
Orville Southerland Cox
Biographical sketch of Orville Southerland Cox, Pioneer of 1847,partly from a sketch written by Adelia B. Cox Sidwell for the"Daughters of the Pioneers", Manti, Utah, 1913.
Orville S. Cox, was born in Plymouth, N.Y. November 25, 1814. He wasone of a family of 12 children, ten of whom reached maturity. Hisfather died when he was about fifteen years old. And he was then"bound out"; apprenticed to learn the trade of a blacksmith under adeacon Jones, who was considered an excellent man as he was a pillarof the church. The agreement was that he was to work obediently untiltwenty one and that Jones as to give him board and clothes, threemonths of school each winter, and teach him the trade ofblacksmithing. No schooling was given or allowed, and one pair ofjeans pants was all the clothing he received during the first threeyears of his apprenticeship, and his food was rather limited too. Thewomen folks ran a dairy, but the boy was never allowed a drink ofmilk, of which he was very fond because the Mrs. said "it made too biga hole in the cheese." He was indeed a poor little bondsman, receivingplenty of abusive treatment. As to teaching him the trade, he was keptblowing the bellows and using the tongs and heavy sledge. But thedeacon sometimes went to distant places and then the boy secretly usedthe tools and practiced doing the things his keen eyes had watched hismaster do. During some of these hours of freedom, he made himself apair of skates from pieces of broken nails he gathered carefully andsaved.
Also, he straightened a discarded gun barrel and made a hammer,trigger, sights, etc, to it, so that he had an effective weapon. Thesethings he had to keep hidden from the eyes of his master andassociates, but secretly he had great joy in his possessions and oncein a while found a little time to use them.
Occasionally the monotony at the bellows and with the tongs andsledge—was broken in other ways;—for example—at one time oxen werebrought to the shop to be shod that had extremely hard hoofs, called"glassy hoofs". Whenever Deacon undertook to drive a nail in, it bent.Cox straightened nails over and over, as nails were precious articlesin those days and must not be discarded because they were bent. Aftera while, the boy said "let me". And he shod the oxen without a bendinga single nail; And thereafter Cox shod the oxen, one and all that cameto the shop.
One other pleasant duty was his: that of burning charcoal, as coal wasthen undiscovered. He learned much of the trade of the woodman whileattending to the pits in the depth of the might New York Forests, aswell as having an opportunity to use his skates and gun a little.
He acquired the cognoman of "Deek" among his associates, and when hehad worked for something over three years, he came to the conclusionthat was all he ever would acquire, along with harsh treatment; soduring one of the Deacon's visits to a distant parish, he gatheredtogether his few belongings and a lunch, between two days, shoulderedhis home made gun and "hit the trail for the tall timber", that beingthe route on which he was least apt to be discovered. He made his waytoward the Susquehannah river. First he reached the Tioga River, whichwas a branch of the Susquehannah. He began reconnoitering for a meansof crossing or floating down the river and soon discover