Name/Title
Wilcox Marker Dedication SpeechScope and Content
This three page speech (from the title on the folder in which it was found), indicates that it was written for the "Wilcox Marker Dedication" in Wilcox Park, April 15, 1999. The author and the person to have given the speech is not noted on the hand written pages. Written in red ink on non archival paper with corrections indicates this might be a first draft.
The park was once the Old Waupun Cemetery where early settlers that included Wilcox family members and veterans of the War of 1812 and the Civil War were buried.
Wilcox Marker Dedication Speech
George Washington, our first President had only been gone 6 years when a boy was born in Madrid Township of upper New York State. It was nearly 160 years ago that this boy - born of Moses & Jemima Willcox - was destined to shape a frontier community in the Old West. This boy, Seymour Wilcox at 18 years of age, showed the enterprising spirit of a forward looking, confident, strong personality that pushed him West into Indian country and frontier hazards.
In 1823, Seymour at 18 owned his own land in Ferrisburg, Vermont.
At the age of 23, he married Lucy Newton at Ferrisburg. Lucy was 20 years old at her marriage. This Lucy Newton also reflected the strength of her native state Vermont in joining hands with Seymour to forge a white civilization out of the hardships in a distant and Wild West.
They came here with ox and wagon. There oldest child, Thurston was only eleven. Their youngest was a mere 4 months old. In their hands they held a deed of land for 80 acres issued by the Green Bay land office and signed by president John Tyler.
Just a little more than a stone's throw from this grave plot he raised a small cabin for his family. He called this delightful Rock River Clearing "Madrid" - after his Native town in New York.
That first cabin became a social center for the folks who came in the next years. It was post office, wedding chapel and delivery room for the first White Male child born in Waupun.
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2.
We stand around this spot recalling Waupun in the old days beyond our earliest remembrances. For most of us, Seymour and Lucy Wilcox are truly representative of new beginnings - fresh confidence, people motivated by a sincere desire to build, construct and provide good things for our youth. This is a nation of youth who have every day the liberty and freedom shaped and won by strong founders. It should be and must be preserved.
Seymour & Lucy Wilcox - 1839 - lived to see a one cabin clearing develop into a village and then a city. Waupun was incorporated as a city in 1878 and one year later, Seymour Wilcox died. Lucy his wife died in 1895.
These two parents brought a family into the world, helped to build a fine city and with confidence in the future, developed the frontier into a place of value for their posterity. They worked hard thru the Civil War years. They felt grief and heaviness when their beloved Lincoln was shot down. They knew the grievances of radical reconstruction and both of them lived to see the end of this near - official hatred of the South in 1877.
These two pioneers like many, have "passed the torch" to us, not only to light the way - but to carry on and put a final end to the inconsistencies illbefitting a free people.
We today are still building a city. A place for ourselves and our children. We are building it for betterment. Never satisfied with status quo. We are pioneer too. We have a long way to go.
We face the frontier of human race relations and world relations.
3.
In Waupun, we must improve everything that we already have and provide everything we may lack. Our needs must be faced as Seymour and Lucy Wilcox faced them.
Today we are remembering the pioneer spirit. A question we must ask of ourselves "Do we still have the pioneer spirit?" Yes! We do! Let us together do the job that began in 1839 - Waupun "Dawn of day" - May it always be dawn for us!
*Typed as written*Acquisition
Accession
2016.0084Source or Donor
Waupun Historical SocietyAcquisition Method
Collected by Staff
