Palmyre Madeleine Cox Merson

Born July 13, 1908, Pam Cox grew up in Port Chester, New York, in a gothic-style home at 38 Elizabeth Street, not far from the center of town. Though her mother, Beatrice Munson Cox, preferred living in town, her father, Alexander James Cox, liked spending his free time in the country around Goldens Bridge, New York, where he could enjoy being around horses and hounds.

Alec Cox had come from County Cork, Ireland, sometime in the 1880s. His business was supplying the households of Port Chester and surrounding towns with coal and ice. The coal was purchased from distributors and delivered to the coal bins in the basement of a home, where it sat close to the home's furnace, ready to be shoveled into the furnace to heat the home and make hot water. The ice was cut in large blocks from the area's frozen ponds throughout the winter, stored in ice houses, and delivered in smaller blocks to homes for people to place in the bottom of the "ice boxes" in which they stored their dairy products and meats.

With a father from Ireland and a mother whose family had earlier emigrated from France, young Pam dreamed of discovering royal ancestors in her family tree. One day, full of hope, she asked her father if perhaps there was a prince or princess back in Irish history from whom the Coxes were descended. Not wanting to encourage this kind of dreaming, Alec said to her, "Pammy, most of our ancestors were horse thieves. The less anyone knows about them, the better off we are!"

So Pam gave up dreaming about royalty. Instead, she joined her father in celebrating a life filled with horses and hounds. She looked forward to the day when she could live on a farm with lots of animals. But first she had to survive a world war, a stock market crash, a depression, and another world war. And survive she did. When she died on September 28, 1957 at the age of 49, she lived on a Pennsylvania farm filled with horses, beagles, sheep, chickens, cattle, and cats. And lots of rats.