James P. Cox
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James Pitman Cox (January 9, 1804 – March 28, 1866; middle name sometimes spelled Pittman) was a tanner, farmer, sheriff and judge from Grant County, Wisconsin.
Cox was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1802. He was orphaned at the age of eight, and was raised by a Quaker family. He received a rudimentary education, then was apprenticed to a tanner. Dissatisfied with tanning, in 1824 he migrated to Wisconsin Territory, settling in an area then part of Iowa County, but which would later become Grant County, and in 1832 was a second lieutenant in the Black Hawk War.[1] He married Caroline Dawson, a native of Shawneetown, Illinois, with whom he would eventually have nine children; they finally settled on a farm in a settlement near Potosi in Grant County, where in April 1839 he filed a plat with an extensive plan for a city to be called Osceola, which never materialized. A ferry landing was established at Osceola, and Cox and his partner Justus Parsons were granted authority to run a ferry to cross the Grant River and then the Mississippi River to a place called Parsons Landing in what would soon be declared Iowa Territory, which ferry would run for some years to come.[2]