Early Years
Cox was born in Montreal, Canada, to American parents, Jacob Dolson Cox and Thedia Redelia Kenyon Cox. The elder Cox was a well-known contractor in New York City, living temporarily in Montreal while he superintended the roof construction of the Church of Notre Dame. He returned with his parents to New York City a year later. His early education included private readings with a Columbia College student. His practical education began at the age of 14 as he worked in a law office as a clerk, and at 16 learned bookkeeping at a brokerage firm. Although as a youth he considered a career at sea, his parents joined the Congregational Church and he decided to study for the ministry. He was influenced by the Reverends Samuel D. Cochran and Charles Grandison Finney, leaders of Oberlin College, which he attended and with which he maintained a lifelong association, including service as a trustee from 1876 to 1900.
At Oberlin, Cox married the eldest daughter of college president Finney in 1849; at age 19, Helen Clarissa Finney was already a widow with a small son. The couple lived with the president, but Cox and his father-in-law became estranged due to theological disputes. He graduated from Oberlin with a degree in theology in 1850 or 1851. He became superintendent of the Warren, Ohio, school system as he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1853. As a strong abolitionist, in 1855 he helped to organize the Republican Party in Ohio and stumped for its candidates in counties surrounding Warren. He entered the Ohio State Senate in 1860 and formed a political alliance with Senator and future President James A. Garfield, and with Governor Salmon P. Chase. While in the legislature, he accepted a commission with the Ohio Militia as a brigadier general and spent much of the winter of 1860–61 studying military science.
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