Cox was born in London, "within the sound of Bow Bells", a son of a hat-maker with an established business in the city.
Cox served an apprenticeship, but left the trade to train as a schoolteacher at the Normal College, Borough Road, run by the British and Foreign Bible Society.
His next post was to a school in Croydon, then was trained as a missionary at the Congregational Home Mission College, near Bedford.
He was then sent to serve as pastor at the Congregational Church at Market Weighton in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and after four years received the call to Adelaide,[1] which he accepted, perhaps influenced by his sister Martha Cox (1826 – 25 June 1919), who married Charles Cleeve Collison (1820 – 7 November 1884) and was mother of Charles Nicholas Collison and emigrated to South Australia in 1849 or 1850.
His widow presented his valuable coin collection to the University,[5] Walter Phillips, Cox, Francis William (1817–1904), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cox-francis-william-3279/text4977, published first in hardcopy 1969, accessed online 16 March 2017.