Knox County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 3,353. Its county seat is Benjamin. The county was created in 1858 and later organized in 1886. It is named for Henry Knox, an American Revolutionary War general.
The Knox County Courthouse in Benjamin
Henry Knox, a Founding Father of the United States, was a Boston bookseller who became a senior general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, serving as chief of artillery in most of Washington's campaigns. Following the American Revolution, he oversaw the War Department under the Articles of Confederation from 1785 to 1789. Washington, at the start of his first administration, appointed Knox the nation's first Secretary of War, a position he held from 1789 to 1794. He is well known today as the namesake of Fort Knox in Kentucky, the repository of a large portion of the nation's gold reserves.
An 1806 portrait of Knox by Gilbert Stuart now housed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
An ox team hauls cannon toward Boston as part of the 1775-76 "Noble train of artillery"
Men are visible behind Washington working to unload cannon in Thomas Sully's 1819 The Passage of the Delaware (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Steel engraving of Henry Knox by Alonzo Chappel