Samuel P. Cox (14 December 1828 – 15 August 1913) was a Union Army Lieutenant-Colonel during the American Civil War. He was most famous for tracking down and killing the Confederate bushwhacker Bloody Bill Anderson at Albany, Missouri in 1864; the brothers Frank and Jesse James attempted to assassinate him in revenge in 1869, but Cox was visiting his parents in California at the time of their robbery of his bank.
Biography[]
Samuel P. Cox was born in Williamsburg, Whitley County, Kentucky in 1828, and he moved with his parents to Daviess County, Missouri in 1839. Cox served in the US Army during the Mexican-American War before returning to Gallatin, Missouri after the war; he also briefly settled in Grass Valley, Nevada and Oroville, California. In 1857, he briefly served as a Daviess County deputy sheriff, and he served as a wagonmaster during the Utah War of 1858-59. In 1861, during the American Civil War, he joined the Missouri Militia with the rank of Major, and, in 1864, he was sent to track down and kill the Confederate bushwhacker Bloody Bill Anderson. He killed him and 27 of his men in battle in a skirmish near Albany, Ray County, Missouri on 26 October 1864. After the war's end, Cox formed a mercantile firm. On 7 December 1869, Frank and Jesse James robbed the Daviess County Savings Association Bank in a failed attempt to assassinate Cox; they left the bank with only $5. Cox had been absent in California on a visit to his parents, and he retired in 1871 and died in 1913.