The Vox Community,
Alleghany County, NC

ox is not a town, but a rural farm community in the area around Vox Road and Pleasant Home Road in northeastern Alleghany County, North Carolina.  The origin of the name "Vox" is not known.  It dates to at least 1900 when a Vox post office was established.  The word "Vox" means "voice" in Latin, as in Vox populi, "the voice of the people."  Most people who attended school in the 19th century studied Latin, even in the backwoods of North Carolina, but whether they named their community "Vox" to make a social or political statement is a mystery.  The Vox post office was discontinued in 1932.  Today, the closest existing towns are Edwards Crossroads and Blevins Crossroads.

At the time of his death in 1864, Chesley Cheek owned at least 1,057 acres of land (about 1.7 square miles) in several parcels adjoining the Little River, Crab Creek, and Moccasin Creek.  Other families in the Vox area included Andrews, Cox, Edwards, Fender, Maines, Richardson, and Wagoner.  Property owners whose land adjoined Chesley's land included his father Richard Cheek, brothers Meredith Cheek and Richard M. Cheek, brothers-in-law John J. Blevins and Alexander Richardson, several Edwards families who were cousins on the Andrews side (including Richard Clifford Edwards, Sr., Archibald Edwards, and Archibald's son Morgan Edwards), John R. Cox, Samuel Cox, and Solomon Toliver.  After Chesley's death in 1864, his land was divided up between his two surviving sons Richard "Dixie" Cheek and William Cheek, and three unmarried daughters, Elizabeth, Lucinda, and Gilley.