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No restrictions. Open for research.

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Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Anna Cox Papers, #4332, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Purchased from Louis Ginsberg of Petersburg, Va., 1982.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1a.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, May 2009

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

Diacritics and other special characters have been omitted from this finding aid to facilitate keyword searching in web browsers.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Camp Marshall (Va.)
• Confederate States of America--Social conditions.
• Cox, Anna, b. ca. 1885.
• Cox, J. M.
• Cox, Peyton A., d. ca. 1895.
• Cox, R. L.
• Family--Indiana--Social life and customs.
• Family--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Forsyth County (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Morgan County (Ind.)--Social life and customs.
• Soldiers--United States--Correspondence.
• Spanish-American War, 1898.
• Wallace, W. D.
• Women--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Yarbrough, George.

Anna Cox, the daughter of Peyton A. (died circa 1895) and Mary E. Wheeler Cox (fl. 1885), was born about 1885, and spent her early childhood in Salem, Forsyth County, N.C. Her brothers and sisters were William A., John M., George H., Emma, and Flora L. Cox. In 1897, Anna Cox moved to Mooresville, Morgan County, Ind., to live with her brother William (Will) and his wife, Lizzie Hadley Cox. She attended high school there and graduated in 1901. Shortly after her graduation, she returned to North Carolina and taught school in a Forsyth County community called Nain.

The collection contains about fifteen letters, before 1890, to and from members of the Cox family; about seventy-five letters, 1893-1908, between Anna Cox and her friends and relatives in Indiana, North Carolina, and elsewhere; about sixty letters, 1893-1915, between other members of the Cox family; four writings by Anna Cox; and a few miscellaneous items. The bulk of the papers consists of correspondence, 1893-1908, between Anna Cox and friends and family members in the areas of Mooresville, Morgan County, Ind., and Salem, Forsyth County, N.C. Many of these letters are from former classmates and refer to local news, career goals, marriage plans, and other personal matters. Two letters with a somewhat different focus are from a North Carolina soldier, George Yarbrough, stationed in Florida and Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Two Civil War letters, both addressed to Confederate Lieutenant R. L. Cox, are included in the earlier correspondence. In one, J. M. Cox of Madison, Rockingham County, N.C., inquired concerning life in the training camp in Raleigh, N.C., and related community and family news. In the other, W. D. Wallace (a friend at Camp Marshall, near Orange Court House, Va.), related camp news to Lieutenant Cox while Cox was on furlough. A few letters from this period between other family members are included; they pertain to health, weather, garment making, debts, and farming. In the later correspondence of other members of the Cox family, topics such as divorce, illnesses and death, household chores, and social activities are discussed.