Horace W. Wilcox

HORACE W. WILCOX has a record of twenty years' connection with the First National Bank of Lucas, of which he is cashier. He has been a resident of Kansas since early childhood, but was born in Madison County, Iowa, July 18, 1871, and represents a family that came from England. His father, John Wellington Wilcox, was born in Western New York May 12, 1847. When a boy the latter's parents moved out to Iowa, where he enlisted in 1862, at the age of sixteen, in the Tenth Iowa Cavalry. He saw three years of active service along the border in Kansas, Nebraska or Colorado, chiefly employed in keeping down the Indians. After the war he took up farming in Iowa, married there, and in the spring of 1874 moved to a farm in Pottawatomie County, Kansas. He was one of the early settlers there and was a Kansas farmer for over thirty years. Since 1910 his home has been at Salina and his residence is at 1110 South Santa Fe Street. He is a republican, a member of the Masonic fraternity and of the Christian Church.

John W. Wilcox married Martha Jane Jones, who was born in Tennessee in 1851. Their children were: Romeo N., a farmer near Sylvan Grove, Kansas; Horace W.; Mary Louisa, wife of O. W. Shideler, a furniture merchant at Boulder, Colorado; Zella, wife of M. H. Brady, who is employed in the claim department of a railroad at Denver; Robert W., a hardware and implement merchant at Lucas, Kansas; Effie, wife of J. E. Beverly, a farmer at Sylvan Grove, Kansas; and Norris, a rural mail carrier at Paradise, Kansas.

Horace W. Wilcox was three years old when brought to Kansas and he gained his early education in the public schools of Pottawatomie and Lincoln counties. He attended the Kansas Christian College at Lincoln, graduating Bachelor of Science in 1896. For a year he was a traveling salesman and was later assistant principal of the Lincoln High School. After this experience he came to Lucas in 1899 and has since been cashier of the First National Bank.

He has borne an effective part in local affairs, serving on the City Council several times and as mayor. He is a republican, a member and deacon in the Baptist Church and superintendent of the Sabbath school, and is affiliated with the Lucas Lodge of Masons and the Ancient Order of United Workmen.

September 3, 1899, in Osborne County, Kansas, Mr. Wilcox married Miss Docia M. Whitaker, daughter of Simeon and Louisa (Ernest) Whitaker, the father a retired farmer of Luray, Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox have four children: Zola May, born April 17, 1903, a senior in the Lucas High School; Cleo E., born August 29, 1905, in the first year of the Lucas High School; Marvin W., born October 10, 1909, and Thelma L., born November 14, 1911, both grammar school pupils.

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