The Cox Hotel, located at 106 West Hargett Street, was owned by Martha Lauria Barbee Cox and Alavia Bryant Cox. The 1910, 1920 and 1930 census listed Martha as the hotel proprietor. She operated the hotel from about 1905 to 1937.

Below is a picture of the left side of the Cox Hotel. The post card from which this is taken says circa 1905, but the house was purchased in 1905 and the back addition was subsequently added after the purchase,

According to the deed recorded in Onslow County Record of Deeds Book 109 Page 530, on April 29, 1905 George E. Brooks sold the Wallace House and property at 106 West Hargett Street (previously named Humphrey Street) to A.B. Cox, husband of Martha Lauria Cox, for $2,000.00. They expanded the Wallace House into the Cox Hotel (which later became known as the "Hotel Richlands"). Martha, commonly called "Mattie" served as the proprietress of the hotel, while AB concentrated on farming. A wing was added to the front of the old Wallace House facing West Hargett Street. An additional wing was added to the back of the structure to allow for more hotel rooms. Boarders and salesmen, many associated with the two tobacco warehouses and the Brock Cotton Gin (all built on the west end of town), mostly arrived into town as a result of the construction about 1916 of the Dover-Southbound Railroad, which terminated in Richlands. The railroad, which was associated with the Goldsboro Lumber Company, carried produce, as well as, passengers on a daily routine northward to Dover in western Craven County. Here the railway connected with other rails westward to Kinston and eastward to New Bern.

From THE KINSTON FREE PRESS SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1913. "The Cox Hotel in Richlands is about as up-to-date a place as one will find in a trip through that part of North Carolina. The service all round is excellent, the cuisine and the beds especially so. A number of new rooms have recently been added. It is rightfully termed "the traveling man's home." Rates are $2 per day. When a stranger alights from the train at Richlands he is greeted by an accomodating bus driver, who will take him, if he is looking for a hotel to the Cox at the host's expense. The free service is helping to popularize the hostelry. There are few towns of the size anywhere with such good hotel accomodations as Richlands affords. For that reason many a man " stays over" there rather than go to Kinston or New Bern at the end of a day's work. WE ARE GLAD THAT WE ARE SUCCEEDING IN BEING USEFUL AND PLEASANT TO OUR HOST OF FARMER FRIENDS-BUT, MOST OF ALL WE ARE GLAD THAT OUR CUSTOMERS APPRECIATE THE VALUE WE GIVE FOR THE DOLLAR. It is an altogether a pleasant place to spend the night in, too, and the company that one finds at the Cox is certain to be interesting and entertaining. It is ultra-progressive."

Teachers regularly boarded at the Cox Hotel. Martha Barbee Hodnett fondly remembers going to the Cox Hotel to retrieve hot lunches for Gladys Bordeaux, her 2nd grade teacher.

Pictures below were taken in 2014 by Janet Peterson while the Cox Hotel/Hotel Richlands was under renovation.

Stephen R. Wallace (1811-1856) apparently came to the Richlands area in the late 1830s, and soon married Louisa Ann Basden Barry (1816-1882), the widow of Brinson M Barry. Stephen and Louisa supposedly built their home in the heart of present-day Richlands about 1840, then nothing more than a rural village with a Methodist Church, the Richlands Academy, a couple of businesses and a few residential homes. During the 1850 Census the Wallace family had ten individuals living within their ousehold, including some students, who were attending the Richlands Academy. Architectural historian Dan Pezzoni and local historians believe that Stephen and Louisa Wallace later expanded their home to become one of the most stylish Victorian dwellings in the heart of Richlands. The Wallace couple had three known children, plus Louisa’s son from her first marriage: Bryan B. Barry (1834-1863), James G. Wallace (1837-1858), Sarah A. Wallace (1840-1875) who married a Gibbs, and their youngest daughter Mary Catherine “Kate” Wallace (1846-1902), who first married U.S. Congressman John Williams Shackelford (1844-1883), and following his death George E. Brooks (1848-1920) of Gates County, NC. Mr. Brooks had a brick kiln on the northwest side of town.

Sources suppliedby Dennis Jones: Wallace/Shackelford Cemetery Records; Starkey Cox Family Cemetery Records; 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900 and 1910 Federal Censuses for Richlands, Onslow County, NC; The Architectural History of Onslow County, North Carolina, J. Daniel Pezzoni, Onslow County Museum, Richlands, NC (1998), Durham, NC: B. Williams & Associates; Assistance from Lisa Whitman-Grice, Director of the Onslow County Museum; Dennis E. Jones personal knowledge.