This came as a letter, dated 10 Apr 1991:To Kathryn Fox
4620 Fox Boro Ave.
Bakersfield, CA 93309
Dear Kathryn,
I have noted your advertisement in the Des Moines Sunday Register for
April 7, 1991, asking for contacts with Fox family descendants. I happen to be a
descendant of a Fox family. probably it will be difficult to trace any relationship, but I
will inform you about what I know of the earliest origins of my Fox family
This family seems to have lived at hanging heaton, a suburb of the mill town of
Dewsbury in Yorkshire in northern England. I was shown the general locality when I visited
England in 1971. The Foxes, before 1800, seem to have been weavers.
My great grandmother was Deborah Fox, who married George Standing. her grandfather was
Joseph Fox. A genealogy written by Bernard Thistlethwaite, The Bax Family states:
"Joseph Fox the 1st, of Hanging Heaton, near Dewsbury, died in or about 1792, at
the age of 32 years, when his son David Fox the 1st was only two years of age. he was a
Wesleyan methodist. he married Hannah (or Sarah) Smith, whose brother, Mahlon Smith, died
in his old age at Dewsbury. According to family tradition he had two brothers and a
sister, namely:
(i) a brother Marmaduke Fox the 1st, who had sons named Ephraim and a daughter, mary
Fox the 2nd, who were prosperous carpet weavers, and a daughter, Mary Fox the 2nd, who
married mark Oldroyd and had issue Sir Mark Oldroyd, a prosperous mill owner, and
prominent Wesleyan of Dewsbury, who married Maria Tew Mewburn of a Quaker family;
(ii) a brother, Mark Fox the 1st, who had a son named Mark the 2nd who married Sarah
Newsome and had issue Joseph Fox the 2nd and mary Fox the 3rd; and
(iii) a sister mary Fox the 1st who married Matthew Milnes the 1st and had a son
Matthew Milnes the 2nd, and a daughter Rhoda Milnes. Matthew Milnes the 2nd (who married
secondly Martha Brown) had issue (by his first wife) Isabella, Edward, mary, Charles and
Rebecca."
Joseph Fox the 1st had only two children:
1. Hannah Fox the 1st, born about 1788, who married James Taylor the 1st of
Staincliffe, Chapel Fold, Dewsbury. They had nine children.
2. David Fox the 1st, b. ca. 1790; d. 21 May 1871; m/1 Sarah Wilby, m/2 Rebecca payne.
he had seven children by his first marriage and eight children by his second marriage. He
had three children of his second marriage who came to the United States to settle: Sarah
Fox who married Fuller Bentley, Deborah Fox who married George Standing, and Samuel Fox
who married Sarah Emma Scott.
Since my great grandmother's brother, Samuel Fox is known to have had only three
children, only a daughter Lucy lived to marry and was living at Maricopa, California in
1911, and it is not known that she had children, I know of no relatives of mine living in
the United States with the name of Fox.
However, since a brother of my grandmother, Mary Alice (Nicholson) Standing, married
Margaret Fox Bentley, daughter of Sarah Fox and Fuller Bentley, I know that Sarah Fox had
many descendants. my great-grandmother Deborah Fox, who married George Standing, had even
more descendants. They are to have a reunion in my home community near Earlham, Iowa June
14-16, 1991. Patricia King of Crum Utah has recently compiled an update of a portion of
the Bax Family by Bernard Thistlethwaite. This Pedigree Eleven update includes most of the
descendants of Sarah (Fox) Bentley and Deborah (Fox) Standing.
If you are interested in more details concerning these Fox descendants, please let me
know.
In friendship,
Herbert C. Standing
1806 348th Circle
Earlham, Iowa 50072