Samuel Whitney Wilcox (1847-1929), the fifth of eight sons of missionaries Abner and Lucy Wilcox, was born at Wai‘oli, Kaua‘i, attended Punahou School and worked as a sugar planter and deputy sheriff in Hanalei prior to becoming Kaua‘i sheriff in
Samuel Whitney Wilcox (1847-1929), the fifth of eight sons of missionaries Abner and Lucy Wilcox, was born at Wai‘oli, Kaua‘i, attended Punahou School and worked as a sugar planter and deputy sheriff in Hanalei prior to becoming Kaua‘i sheriff in 1872, a position he held until 1897.
In 1874 he married Emma Lyman and joined his brother George Norton Wilcox at Grove Farm, where he managed ranching operations and where their children Ralph, Lucy, Elsie, Charles, Gaylord and Mabel were born and raised.
Sheriff S.W. Wilcox was off-island in June of 1893 when Deputy Sheriff Louis Stolz of Waimea went into remote Kalalau Valley to round up lepers who had fled there to prevent authorities from deporting them to Moloka‘i’s isolated Kalaupapa peninsula, where the government had designated all sufferers of Hansen’s disease (leprosy) be sent.
One of the lepers in Kalalau Valley, a Kekaha cowboy named Ko‘olau, shot and killed Stolz when Stolz approached him with the intent to take him into custody.
Stolz’s murder prompted Sanford Dole, president of the provisional government of Hawai‘i, to declare martial law in Kaua‘i’s Waimea and Hanalei districts.
On July 2, a steamer landed police and soldiers from Honolulu on the beach at Kalalau with the mission of removing all leprous persons from the valley and apprehending Ko‘olau. Sheriff Wilcox was with them, as was William Wilcox, his brother, acting as interpreter.
Ko‘olau shot and killed two soldiers, yet by July 4 all leprous persons had been accounted for except for Ko‘olau and his young son, as well as his unafflicted wife, Pi‘ilani, and the landing party left. When Ko‘olau and the boy later died in Kalalau Valley, Pi‘ilani returned to Kekaha.
Samuel Wilcox also served in the territorial House of Representatives (1901-1902) and as a territorial senator (1903-1907).
