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Letter, 9 December 1886
Item
Joseph Willcox was born on August 11, 1829, in Ivy Mills, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
He was a paper manufacturer and naturalist. Willcox and his brothers (Willcox Paper Mill) manufactured the banknote and bond papers for the U. S. Treasury Department during the Civil War. He was Colonel of the 16th Regiment of the Pennsylvania militia. He graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University in 1887 and served as one of the commissioners in charge of the second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania for fifteen years. He was a long-time Trustee of the Wagner Free Institute of Science (1878-1918) and was associated with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Willcox travelled to Florida in the 1880s to collect paleontological, geological, zoological, and archeological specimens. He published the book "Ivy Mills, 1729-1866: Willcox and Allied Families" (1911).
In 1864, he married Elizabeth Philipson Morgan (1827–1909). He died on September 30, 1918, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Letter from J. Willcox to John William Dawson, written from Philadelphia.