The Lost Cox Children

By David Miller (Lead Investigator)

History

On April 24, 1856, The Cox’s family sat down for breakfast.  After breakfast (Samuel) the father was getting ready to go out into the woods to hunt. While (Susannah) the mother was cleaning up after breakfast, the two young boys George  (7) and Joseph (5) went out the door to go with their father.

As time went by Samuel took a different path home, not seeing that his two boys were following.  As the boys followed their father deeper and deeper into the woods they realized that they had lost him.

When Samuel arrived home, he found out the boys followed him into the woods.  He went out to call for them, but there was no response.  Samuel raced over to the neighbor’s house to get help and then called upon the other neighbors for additional assistance.

The night came fast, but it was warm that evening so he knew his boys would survive the darkness.  As the sun came up the next day, the search started again. This time with a lot more people than they had before.  The men searched for miles for the boys, but no one came back with any information about the boys.  The parents of the Cox children began to look guilty and the other town’s people began to accuse them of murder. 

             About 12 miles away, a farmer named Jacob Dibert had a dream that he could not understand.  He explained that in his dream he was doing a solo search for the boys.  As he was rummaging around for any signs, he came across a dead deer.  He decided to follow the blood trail it had left behind, but to his surprise he found a small child’s shoe at the end of the trail.   He continued to follow the trail searching desperately for another clue of the boys.  He crossed a creek and followed it until he saw a large tree that had fallen down.  At the end of the tree, where the roots were, he saw two boys lying together dead.  Jacob didn’t know what to think about his dream when he awoke, but he did know that he had to tell his wife.  After telling her, he woke up many nights after, having the same dream.  Finally he told his wife to tell her brother about the dream, hoping that he would know what it meant.  Her brother (Harrison Whysong) told them that the woods that he described were familiar to him.  They got some people together and went out into the woods to see if what he dreamt was actually there.  They followed the dream exactly the way it happened and found the shoe and the deer exactly where he did in his dream.  It ranged from two to five minutes after that, when they found the two boys dead at the foot of a tree that had fallen down.