My Genealogy Hound

THOMAS S. WILCOX, one of the most prosperous and advanced farmers of Seneca County, was born in this county May 16, 1821, and has lived here continuously throughout his long and useful life. His parents, Jotham and Louisa (Scudder) Wilcox, were both natives of Essex County, N. J., where they were married. In 1819 they removed to Seneca County, this state, where they secured two farms, of one hundred acres each, one of which was beautifully located on Seneca Lake, and the other in Romulus. Upon the former they resided, and there was born the subject of this article, who was the only one of their five children who survived them.

In 1848 Jotham Wilcox succumbed to a stroke of apoplexy, being then fifty-eight years of age, and was interred in the Baptist Graveyard. His funeral is still remembered by many of the older residents, it having been attended by a large concourse of people. His keen intellect and natural gift of oratory had gained him several nominations as a legislative candidate, honors which he had always declined. His faithful wife survived him but three years and was laid to rest by his side. Our subject also mourns the loss of two brothers and two sisters. Eliza married Benjamin Bartlett, with whom she lived on the Romulus farm until he moved to Ovid; later they located in Niagara County, where the wife died. Mary Jane became the wife of Edward I. Judd, of Romulus, at which place she passed to the better land. Daniel farmed the place near Romulus, and died in the village of that name. Richard lived and died on the homestead bordering upon the lake.

March 26, 1846, Mr. Wilcox led to the altar one of the belles of the county, Miss Elizabeth Abbott, a daughter of Elijah Abbott. To-day she and one brother are all that remain of a family of eleven. The first three years of a life of unbroken hymeneal bliss they spent on the lake farm, but in 1849, a year after the death of the father of Mr. Wilcox, they removed to the desirable one hundred and twenty-five acre farm in the town of Varick, near MacDougall, upon which they have since resided. In the forty-six years which have intervened Mr. Wilcox has improved the tract until it blossoms as the rose. His house is one of the finest in the town. Lake Seneca is but two and one-half miles away, and from the observatory which crowns the home one can catch glimpses of seven counties. Taken all in all, the homestead of Mr. Wilcox is a place of which any man, however wealthy, might well be proud.

The union of our subject and his wife has been blessed with three sons: Hermann and Elijah, both of whom graduated at Rochester College, and Richard C., who died at the age of six years. Hermann, the eldest, chose the medical profession and took a course at the State University at Ann Arbor, and also at Bellevue Medical College. He practiced medicine successfully in New York City for five years, or until he married the beautiful and only daughter of Mr. Hartmann, a cloth manufacturer, when he became a partner in the business of his father-in-law. Since then he has embarked in the real-estate business, and is to-day one of the prominent dealers in New York real estate. The second son, Elijah, is also in business in New York City. He married Miss Clara Hiatt, a young lady of Brooklyn, who at her death left two pretty daughters, Florence and Edith, who flit about the home of their paternal grandparents like two rays of sunshine.

In politics Mr. Wilcox was a Democrat prior to the war, but since then he has voted the Republican ticket. Although he never desired office, he was once elected Justice of the Peace, but did not qualify for the office. Throughout their entire lives he and his wife have been members of the Baptist Church, and Mr. Wilcox is one of the pillars of the Baptist Church at West Romulus.