Obituary:
Milburn Columbus Knox was born in Livingston County Missouri on February 18, 1857 and died August 20, 1926 on his farm seven miles northeast of Raymondville. Mr. Knox came to Texas with his parents, William Shields and Sarah Haynes Knox, when he was four years old and resided in Kaufman County until about 1884. He was married to Amanda Elizabeth Jane Phillips in Kaufman County on December 17, 1879. Fourteen children were born to them, nine of whom and are all here except William who, with his family, resides in Hardeman County. The children are Ada Bell Smyth, B.F. Knox, Earl and Elwood Knox, Mrs. Stella Hilderbrandt, Alvin, Buel and Iburn Knox. Mr. & Mrs. Knox came here with their family January 4,1920 from Stephens County, the family members numbering 38 at the time, including grandchildren. Mr. Knox had been ill for over a year and all has been done to relieve his suffering. He had been in Brownsville and San Benito the past eleven weeks receiving treatments, but when they saw the end was near, he was brought home Sunday and he passed away Friday. He joined the Chiurch of Christ when a young man and was a faithful member until the end. Funeral services were held at the grave at 2 o'clock Friday afternoon where he was laid to rest in the Raymondville Cemetery. C.F. Thompson read the burial service.
Willacy County News, August, 1926

The children who preceded Milburn and Amanda in death were:
Mary Ann Knox 1881-1882,Kaufman Co.
Pearl Katherine Knox,twin of Earl,1892-1894, Stephens Co.
Valentine Stirman Knox,1901-1903,Stephens Co.
Charles Dean Knox, 1888-1919, Stephens Co.
Esther Ellen McPherson, 1886-1920, d.Cameron(now Willacy) Co.
Milburn and Amanda Knox had 14 children, 11 living to adulthood. Milburn farmed & ranched in Stephens Co. where he had over 600 acres of land until, in 1919, he was lured by advertisements describing land opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, a tropical paradise where lush farm crops grew with little effort & one could get rich quickly. (Until 1904, when the railroad finally came through, the area had been called the "Desert of the Dead" because of the thick brush & cactus covering it.) Land speculators offered prospective buyers excursion train trips to the Valley, making sure they did not see any of the disadvantages such as the periodic flooding of the land by the Rio Grande River. They did not reveal that Pancho Villa or other Mexican bandits still raided the area occasionally. Milburn made three of these excursion trips, buying land each time. On December 1, 1919 Milburn & Amanda's son, Charles Dean Knox, died of typhoid fever in Stephens Co. Although family members have thought grief over his son's death caused Milburn to leave Stephens County quickly, Stephens County records reveal that he had been selling off his land there for over a year before the move. He moved to the Valley by train with all of his family, including married children & grandchildren. Thirty-eight family members came with their cattle, household belongings,& farm equipment. They left on December 31, 1919,first having to transport their belongings by wagon 25 miles to Albany TX, the nearest train station. They arriveed in Raymondville on January 4, 1920. Several men of the family rode on the rail cars with the cattle, household goods and farm equipment, arriving about two weeks later. The family members settled on land in the Santa Margarita area. Milburn & family lived in a large house across from the Mead's Store, near the Knox well & the Santa Margarita School, built in 1912. Mead's Store had been the commissary for the workers clearing the land & the Knox home may have been their rooming house. The farms had running water piped from the Knox well, with cement stock tanks, supplying water for the livestock by merely turning on a faucet. The Knox well was the only "sweet" water well in the area. It was intended that the farms be irrigated by numerous wells, until it was found that the mineral content of the water was unsuitable for crops. All the Knox families farmed in the area, soon learning the hardships of dry-land farming in the Valley & enduring floods on their land from time to time until the floodway was built years later.
Another of the Knox children, Esther Knox McPherson, died from complications of malaria 6 weeks after the families arrived.She was 12th person buried in the Raymondville Cemetery. Milburn bought a large plot for his family members. Esther's husband, Joe McPherson, and eight children returned to Breckenridge to live after her death. Joe's sister, Minerva Knox, widow of Charles Dean Knox, and her three children also returned to Breckenridge, leaving 24 of the 38 Knox family members who arrived in Raymondville on January 4, 1920. Several of the children and their families lived in Willacy County the remainder of their lives. William moved away by 1925; Stella Knox Hilderbrandt died in 1938; while Buel, Alvin, Ada, and Iburn moved away in the early 1940's.
The Knox families and the C.F. Thompson family formed the first Church of Christ congregation in Willacy County, which after several years of meeting in various church buildings of others and the Santa Margarita School, became the Raymondville Church of Christ. Several of the Santa Margarita community residents and Knox families also helped begin the Church of Christ congregation in San Perlita.