Woman of the Century/Hannah Tyler Wilcox

WILCOX, Mrs. Hannah Tyler, physician, born in Boonville, N. Y., 31st August, 1838. Her father, Amos Tyler, was a cousin of President John Tyler. His liberal ideas on the subject of woman's education were far in advance of his generation. HANNAH TYLER WILCOX. Her mother's father, Joseph Lawton, was a patron of education and one of the founders of the first medical college in New York, in Fairfield, Herkimer county. His home and purse were open to the students and professors, and thus Elizabeth Lawton learned to love the science of medicine, though not permitted to study it. Her daughter, Hannah, attended the academies in Holland Patent and Rome, N. Y., and, being desirous of a higher education than could there be obtained, she went to the Pennsylvania Female College, near Philadelphia, where she was graduated with honors in 1860. A call came to the president of the college for a teacher to take charge of an academy in southwest Missouri. This involved a journey three-hundred miles by stage coach south of St. Louis. Miss Tyler resolved to accept the position, and in one year she built up a successful school, when the war of 1861 made it unsafe for a teacher of northern views to remain, and she returned to her native town. In 1862 she became the wife of Dr M. W. Wilcox, of Rochester, N. Y. They went to Warrensburg, Mo., and there witnessed some of the stirring scenes of that period of national strife. Three times they witnessed the alternation of Federal and Confederate rule. She entered into the profession with her husband and studied in the various schools, the allopathic, eclectic, and later, desiring to know if there was any best in "pathies" of medicine, she took a degree in the homeopathic school in St. Louis. Mo., where she resided many years. She is a believer in the curative powers of electricity, and many of her cures are on record, with the skillful use of various means of healing the sick. Her great aim is the advancement of her sex. She is prominent in all the great movements of and for women, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Woman's Relief Corps and the educational and industrial unions. She is a member of the National American Institute of Homoeopathy, and was a delegate from St. Louis and Missouri to the convention in Saratoga, N. Y., in 1887. She has been medical examiner for ten years for the Order of Chosen Friends. In 1887 her health failed from overwork, and she sought the invigorating climate of southern California, in Los Angeles. When her health was restored, she returned to her home in St. Louis. Her lectures on health and dress for women have aided materially in reform. She has been a widow for many years and has one living son. In 1892 she removed to Chicago, Ill., and is now permanantly located in that city.