Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Knox, Joseph (Rock Island)

Born: 1805-01-11 Blandford, Massachusetts

Flourished: 1837 to 1860 Rock Island County, Illinois

Joseph Knox, attorney, read law under his brother and was admitted to the bar in Worcester County in his native Massachusetts in 1828. He practiced law in Hardwick, Massachusetts before moving west, living for a few months in St. Louis then settling in Rock Island County, Illinois in 1837. Knox farmed there for a couple of years, after which he resumed his legal career in Rock Island and practiced on the judicial circuit of which Rock Island County was a part. He partnered with J. Wilson Drury as the firm of Knox & Drury and following the dissolution of that partnership engaged in the subsequent firms of Knox & Webster and Knox, Reed, & Webster. Knox was known for his 1846 prosecution of the accused murderers of George Davenport, and he later joined Abraham Lincoln as a defense attorney in Hurd et al. v. Rock Island Bridge Co., the so-called Effie Afton case, which was heard in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 1857. About 1860, Knox moved to Chicago where he eventually became the state’s attorney for Cook County. That same year, Knox owned real property valued at $200,000 and possessed $2,000 worth of personal property. He married Susan Mixter in 1831 and the pair had several children. In politics, Knox was a Democrat and supporter of Stephen A. Douglas, but broke with the party over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the extension of slavery, and became a Republican and supporter of John C. Fremont in the election of 1856.

Paul Selby and Newton Bateman, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Rock Island County (Chicago: Munsell, 1914), 2:1244-45; Portrait and Biographical Album of Rock Island County, Illinois (Chicago: Biographical, 1885), 699; Thomas W. Baldwin, comp., Vital Records of Hardwick Massachusetts, to the Year 1850 (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1917), 202; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Rock Island County, IL, 260; O. P. Wharton, Lincoln and the Beginning of the Republican Party in Illinois (Springfield: Illinois State Journal, 1912), 4-5; Hurd et al. v. Rock Island Bridge Co., Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=137684; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 6, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 372; The Rock Island Argus (IL), 8 August 1881, 4:4, 9 August 1881, 4:2-3; Review Dispatch (Moline, IL), 12 August 1881, 1:6, 2:4; Gravestone, Chippiannock Cemetery, Rock Island, IL.