Marion Leonidas Fox Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1574-1575 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. II (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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	MARION LEONIDAS FOX, who was the organizer of the Security Trust 
Company, of Sioux Falls, and who has been its secretary and manager from 
the time of inception, is one of the able newspaper men of the state, 
having been prominently identified with several enterprises of this line 
in South Dakota. He is a native of Buncombe county, North Carolina, 
where he was born on the 25th of October, 1865, being a son of John 
Jacob and Elizabeth (Roberts) Fox, native of North Carolina and both of 
whom are dead, the former having been for many years engaged in 
agriculture and having served in the senate of North Carolina from 1884 
to 1888. After completing the curriculum of the public schools the 
subject entered Greenville and Tusculum College, at Tusculum, Tennessee, 
where he completed the scientific course and was graduated as a member 
of the class of 1889. Thereafter he was identified with the newspaper 
business in Asheville, North Carolina, until he was appointed to a 
clerkship in the department of the interior in the national capital. He 
retained this incumbency until 1893, when he resigned to accept a 
position on the staff of the Washington News, then recently established, 
and he afterward held a reportorial position in Washington with the 
United Press Association, and later was employed on the Washington Post. 
In 1895 Mr. Fox came to South Dakota and became editor of the Sioux 
Falls Daily Press in the fall of the following year. He retained this 
position until August, 1898, when he accepted the editorial charge of 
the Deadwood Independent. In 1900 he again became editor of the Sioux 
Falls Press and continued in tenure of the position until the paper was 
sold to its present proprietors, the firm of Dotson & Bowen. In January. 
1901, he organized the Security Trust Company, of Sioux Falls, for the 
purchase and sale of cheap lands, and since that time has been actively 
and successfully identified with the real-estate business, the company 
mentioned controlling extensive and valuable landed interests in various 
sections of the state. He is a Democrat in politics, a member of the 
Masonic order and is identified with the Presbyterian church. 

	On the 7th of June, 1900, Mr. Fox was united in marriage to Miss 
Jessamine Lee, the only child of Governor Andrew E. Lee, of South 
Dakota.