Cox, Clarissa 1819-1898

COX, MOORE, ARBUCKLE, LAWRENCE, CAUGHLIN, HOLLOWAY

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 4/26/2005 at 09:28:27

The Newton Record Thursday, February 24, 1898
Death of Old “Granny Moore” Close of a Long Life of Toil ­ Born a Slave in Old Kentucky in 1819
Cox, Clarissa

Clarissa Cox, better known by our people as Granny Moore, and aged colored woman who has been well known here since 1861, died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Mary Moore, last Sunday afternoon. For the past four years she has been a great sufferer, confined constantly to her bed with rheumatism and dropsy, although paralysis was probably the immediate cause of her death.

Granny’s life has been one of toil and hardship. She was born a slave in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, on May 3, 1819. She was first the property of a rich planter by the name of Arbuckle, who gave her as a present to his daughter, Mrs. Will Lawrence, who took her to Missouri and traded her to a Miss Nell Caughlin for a lot of Missouri land, who afterwards presented her to her daughter, an illegitimate child of Bill Lawrence. Clarissa afterward passed into the possession of a family by the name of Cox from whom she took her name.

Before her old master Lawrence died, he traded for all of Clarissa’s brothers and sisters who had been sold away, and set them free, but he could not get her from her master. She never saw any of them afterward, except one brother, who went to see her at St. Joe, Mo., on his road to California, promising to come back some day and buy her and set her free. He never came. Clarissa’s life had been a hard one, her work always being as a field hand.

In 1861, after the war broke out, her master told her that she had better take her children and come north. Accordingly, accompanied by her two daughters, Mrs. Marshall Holloway and Mary, now Mrs. Wm. Moore, they came to Iowa in the hope of finding Mrs. Holloway’s husband, who had run away from his master sometime before, and were fortunate in finding him in Newton. They arrived here on the sixth day of Sept. 1861.

The funeral was held at the A. M. E. Church on Tuesday afternoon conducted by Rev. Thomas Watson, a local preacher, who had always been a close friend of Granny’s. A large number of friends, both white and colored, were present, as a mark of respect for the old colored woman.

Originally submitted on Wed Aug 28 18:21:32 2002