Lawyer
Centurion, 1898–1907
Born 12 December 1849 in New York (Brooklyn), New York
Died 24 April 1907 in North Atlantic, At Sea
Buried Moravian Cemetery
, New Dorp, New York
Proposed by Robert W. de Forest and Charles Lanier
Elected 5 November 1898 at age forty-eight
Archivist’s Note: He died aboard the Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer Barbarossa while en route from Italy to New York.
Century Memorial
David Willcox, fifty-seven years old, and a member of The Century for eight years at the time of his decease, combined many remarkable qualities. A graduate of Yale and Columbia, he speedily became a lawyer of eminence and a profound student of economics; the climax of his achievement was in fields of labor elemental to national existence: mining and transportation. Throughout these later troubled years of social, financial, and economic transformation, he studied diligently, formed convictions, and made a fierce struggle in the full light of publicity for such principles as he believed fundamental to the national welfare. He was likewise a judicious and liberal philanthropist in fields and dimensions of national importance. He was born in Long Island and was a patriotic New Yorker to the end.
William Milligan Sloane
1908 Century Association Yearbook