Francis William COX

COX, FRANCIS WILLIAM (b. London England, 23 Jan 1817, d. Adelaide, SA, 29 Mar 1904). Congregational minister (ordained 1852) and author in SA.

Son of a hatmaker Cox was educated at St Saviour's Grammar School Southwark. Though his father was a churchwarden in St Saviour's Church, the family attended Rowland Hill's Surrey Chapel. While a youth in his father's business Cox came under the influence of Thomas Binney of King's Weigh House Chapel. He left the business to train as a teacher for the BFSS teaching in several schools, including Gloucester. There he met Joseph Sturge who kindled his interest in the BFBS. He also became acquainted with Bristol Quakers but retained his connection with Congregationalism. He began lay preaching at Gloucester and subsequently entered the Congregational Home Mission College Cotton End Bedfordshire aged 30. He ministered for four years at Market Weighton Congregational Church Yorkshire and in 1857 accepted the call to the Ebenezer Congregational Chapel in Adelaide, which became Hindmarsh Square Congregational Church in 1862. Cox remained its pastor until his retirement in 1898.

A leader in his denomination and a pastor to pastors Cox was secretary of the Congregational Union (1858-69 1874-80) and Chairman (1859 1872). One of the governors of the Parkin Congregational mission at its inception in 1882 Cox was secretary until his death. He was a keen supporter of the BFBS LMS the SA branch of the EA, and the Aborigines' Friends' Association of which he was chairman (1884-97). He was also a prominent champion of religious liberty and equality in South Australia the progress of which he celebrated in The Jubilee Record of Congregationalism in South Australia (1887).

Cox's piety was austere yet also compassionate. He maintained that individual regeneration was the way to a better society. An amateur geologist, he approved the findings of contemporary geology which he held did not impugn the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. Though he had little formal education Cox was richly cultured and was regarded as an authority on art in Adelaide.

Cox married Mary Ainsley Aldersey of Noarlunga on 1 December 1863. They had two sons and three daughters, one of whom, Lois, was among the first Australians to offer for overseas missionary work. She died in India in 1892.

Cox's portrait, commissioned by the Congregational Union, is in the South Australian Art Gallery.

ADB 3; F W Cox, Diaries; F W Cox and L Robjohns, Three-Quarters of a Century (Adelaide, 1912)

WALTER PHILLIPS