[Ansley Wilcox]

     Ansley Wilcox is still a young man, having barely passed two score years; but a strong personal force, displayed in all his dealings with his fellow-men, has given him a place in the esteem of the community that few men attain at his age. Endowed with an acute sense of right and wrong in public affairs, and with a sturdy determination to do a lion’s share toward the correction of the political and social abuses of the times, Mr. Wilcox has closely identified himself with all the reform movements of recent years, and has been a tower of strength to the cause of good government. He is a type of the best citizenship to be found in American life.
     Born near Augusta, Ga., just before the breaking out of the Civil War, young Wilcox spent his boyhood amid some of the most stirring scenes of that great and fierce struggle. In the last year of the war his family left the South, and finally settled in Connecticut, which was his father’s native state. The second ten years of his life were passed at New Haven, first in attending a preparatory school, and afterward as a student at Yale College. Then came a year of rest and travel, succeeded by a year of post-graduate study at University College, Oxford, England.
     Having moved to Buffalo in 1876, and been admitted to the bar two years later, Mr. Wilcox began a brilliant career, and soon attained a foremost rank among the lawyers of western New York. For ten years the firm of Allen, Movius & Wilcox was one of the strongest at the Buffalo bar. Mr. Wilcox, while a forcible and brilliant speaker, has devoted most of his time and attention professionally to office law rather than to the trial of cases in the courts. He enjoys a large and lucrative practice.
     Mr. Wilcox has never had any aspirations in the direction of office holding, and many phases of political life are particularly distasteful to him. Independence has been his watchword from the start, and the independent movement in national politics beginning in 1884, appealed most strongly to him, and had his heartiest sympathy and support. He was a leader of the movement in his part of the state.
     Outside of politics, also, Mr. Wilcox has labored energetically for the cause of reform. The Buffalo Charity Organization Society—an association which has been the forerunner of many similar societies in the country, and which is founded on the principle that the best way to aid the poor is to help them to [176][177] help themselves—counted him among its first and most active members. The unqualified success of this practical charity owes not a little to his energy and devotion to its interests.
     In the social life of Buffalo Mr. Wilcox has been conspicuous. He is a prominent member of the Buffalo Club, and was its president in 1893; and he has taken a more or less active part in many societies, both social and charitable, of his city. For ten years he has regularly delivered a course of lectures at the University of Buffalo, where he has the professorship of medical jurisprudence. While in college and in the early years after graduation, Mr. Wilcox wrote several magazine articles; but in recent times he has found little leisure for purely literary work.
     PERSONAL CHRONOLOGY—Ansley Wilcox was born at Summerville, Ga., January 27, 1856; prepared for college at Hopkins Grammar School, New Haven, Conn., and graduated from Yale College in 1874; studied at University College, Oxford, England, 1875-76; was admitted to the bar in 1878; married Cornelia C. Rumsey of Buffalo January 17, 1878, and her sister, Mary Grace Rumsey, November 20, 1883; was in the firm of Crowley, Movius & Wilcox, 1882-83, in that of Allen, Movius & Wilcox, 1883-92, and in that of Movius & Wilcox, 1892-93, has been associated with Worthington C. Miner since early in 1894.