Restrictions to Access

This collection contains additional materials that are not available for immediate or same day access. Please contact Research and Instructional Service staff at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu to discuss options for consulting these materials.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Willcox Family Papers #5052, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

Typed transcriptions of many of the letters are available.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Bobby Vincent Willcox through Carol Melton of Durham, N.C., in March 2001 (Acc. 98894). Addition purchased from Mrs. Bobby V. Willcox of Southern Pines, N.C., in April 2003 (Acc. 99577).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Kristin Soya, November 2001

Encoded by: Kristin Soya, November 2001

Updated by: Nancy Kaiser, January 2006; Kathryn Michaelis, November 2009

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Agricultural laborers--Louisiana.
• Autograph albums--South Dakota--History--20th century.
• Autograph albums--Tennessee--History--19th century.
• Families--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Famlies--Mississippi--Social life and customs.
• Moore County (N.C.)--History.
• Physicians--North Carolina--History.
• Real property--Mississippi.
• Real property--North Carolina.
• Slavery--Mississippi.
• Slavery--North Carolina.
• Southern States--Social conditions.
• University of North Carolina (1793-1962)--Students--History--20th century.
• Willcox family.
• Willcox, Jesse Womble, 1879-1964.
• Willcox, William Penn, 1825-1883.

George Willcox (b. 1783) married Mary Ann Tyson (b. 1790). Their son, William Penn Willcox (1825-1883), a physician in Carthage, Moore County, N.C., married Ann Eliza Harrington (1830-1872). Joseph D. Willcox, brother of William P. Willcox, lived in Wyatt, Miss., in the 1850s.

William P. and Ann Willcox had a son, William Cyrus Willcox (1855-1932), who married Virginia B. Waddell (1856-1933). Jesse Womble Willcox was the son of William C. and Virginia Willcox.

Jesse W. Willcox was born on 20 September 1879 in Carthage, N.C. He received a Ph.B. degree in 1903 and an M.D. degree in 1906 from the University of North Carolina. He married Meta Vestal Watson in 1907. He practiced medicine in Carthage, 1906-1911, and was resident physician and acting superintendent of the North Carolina State Sanitorium, 1911-1912. He was a physician at Laurel Hill, 1912-1918 and 1920-1922; first lieutenant, United States Medical Corps, 1918-1920; passed assistant surgeon, United States Public Health Service, 1922-1923; and medical director of the Pine Breeze Sanitorium in Chattanooga, Tenn., beginning in 1924. He was superintendent of the Glenridge Sanitorium in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1933.

Mary Vincent, whose autograph book and tintype are in this collection, was born in October 1861 and died in October 1938. She was the daughter of Dolfus Ferdinand Vincent and Mary Shakelford Vincent and was later known as Mary Alvin Vincent Ashburn (Mollie or Polly). She appears to have been a teacher in Manchester, Tenn.

The collection consists of letters, deeds, receipts, autograph albums, a tintype, and other papers of the Willcox family of North Carolina and Mississippi. Letters are dated 1852-1933, most of them addressed to William P. Willcox in North Carolina during the 1850s. In them, his brother Joseph D. Willcox of Wyatt, Miss., and others discussed the health of friends and family, politics and the railroad, farming, cotton, teaching, and slaves. Later letters concern hiring hands in North Carolina for planters in Louisiana, estate settlement, and personal financial matters. Deeds are dated 1868-1936. The two earliest are from Lafayette County, Miss. The rest are from North Carolina, five from Moore County, N.C., 1921-1936. Other papers include a 1920 United States Army discharge for physician Jesse W. Willcox; a 1957 newspaper clipping about him; three sheets of handwritten Willcox family genealogy; a 1903 students handbook from the University of North Carolina that Jesse W. Willcox used as a cash account book; an autograph album, 1884-1886, belonging to Mary Vincent, a teacher in Tennessee; an autograph book, 1928-1929, belonging Patricia Alvinne Louise Willcox with autographs collected in Custer, S.D., where she went to high school; and a tintype of Mary Vincent.

• Tintype of Mary (Mollie) Alvin Vincent (SF-P-5052/1)