Wilbur, George W. (George Willis), 1851-1931

George W. Wilbur was a Chicago attorney who was originally from Belvidere, Illinois. He owned a stamp mill in Colorado, and stock in two mining companies that he also represented professionally. His mother, Sarah Ann Cook Wilbur (1816-1904), a milliner, was born in New York State and lived much of her adult life in Belvidere. His brother, Albert H. Wilbur, went west in 1875 and worked as a station manager for various railroads most of his adult life. George's wife, Ellen Rice Wilbur (d. 1932), a niece of Samuel D. Warren of Boston, attended Rockford College and was a librarian in Belvidere before her marriage. Their daughter, Susan Wilbur Jones (1893-1969), attended Wellesley, became an author and translator, married the author and editor Llewellyn Jones (1884-1961), and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1940s.

From the description of George W. Wilbur family papers, 1737-1954 (bulk 1870-1931). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 702137133

The George W. Wilbur Family is characteristic of many American middle class families of their time. It was headed by George W. Wilbur (1851-1931), a Chicago attorney, whose brother Albert H. Wilbur (dates unknown) lived in many parts of the West while working on the railroads. Their mother was Sarah Ann Cook Wilbur (1816-1904), a resident of Belvidere, Illinois, where George and Albert Wilbur grew up. George Wilbur and his wife Ellen Rice Wilbur (d. 1932) had a daughter, Susan Wilbur Jones (1893-1969), who attended Wellesley and became an editor and translator while living first in Chicago and then Cambridge, Massachusetts.

George Wilbur's mother Sarah Ann Cook Wilbur was born in October 1816 in Oneida, Madison County, New York, one of at least eight children. Her husband George Wilbur (sometimes spelled Wilber) was originally from Chatham Four Corners, Columbia County, New York. Together they moved to Belvidere, Boone County, Illinois (about sixty miles northwest of Chicago), where he made a living as a house painter and furniture refinisher.

Sarah Ann and George Wilbur had two children: George Willis Wilbur (born November 6, 1851) and Albert Harper Wilbur (born December 13, year unknown). George senior died in April 1858 at the age of 35, leaving Sarah Ann with two young children. It is not clear whether Sarah Ann had been a milliner before George's death, but afterwards she supported herself and her sons with this trade until the early 1870s when George and Albert jointly assumed her financial support.

Sarah Ann Cook Wilbur kept in close contact with her brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. As she grew older, she assumed the role of family matriarch. The widow developed an especially close relationship with her sons; after Albert moved west in 1875, she lamented the fact that he chose to live so far away, and encouraged George to visit and write often after he moved first to Chicago and then to Oak Park, Illinois. She suffered from asthma and increasing blindness in her later life, yet lived to the age of 88, passing away in December 1904.

Very little is known of the early life of George Wilbur. While he lived in Belvidere he was the secretary of the local "America Base Ball Club," worked in the livery business, and taught school briefly in Flora, Boone County, Illinois. Wilbur enrolled at Champaign University in the fall of 1872 to study civil engineering. Lack of funds caused him to end his studies there in March 1873. He went back to the livery business in the spring of 1873, working for W. G. Leonard. George occasionally wrote unsigned articles for the Belvidere Standard about local happenings; the earliest such article in the collection dates from the middle of 1873.

George Wilbur began his legal career in 1874 with a brief stint as Deputy County Clerk of Boone County. After this, he found employment as a clerk in several law firms in Chicago. He continued to work after enrolling at the Union College of Law in Chicago, jointly run by the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. In June 1876 he received his Bachelor of Law, which carried with it automatic admission to the Illinois bar.

In 1888 George Wilbur married Ellen Georgette Rice, known as Nellie, a neighbor of his when he lived in Belvidere. In 1890, an infant son, named George Rice Wilbur, died of pneumonia. A daughter, Susan Warren Wilbur, was born in 1893. George doted on Susan and developed a very close relationship with her much as he had with his mother. The year after Susan was born, George and Ellen moved to Oak Park, Illinois, though he continued to practice in Chicago.

Early in his career, George Wilbur worked for many different law firms: Palmer & Colt; Monroe, Bisbee & Ball; Sheldon & Waterman; Wallace Heckman; and Rogers & Appleton. In the mid-1880s he formed a partnership with James H. Ward (Ward & Wilbur); in the 1890s he and William R. Hauze formed Wilbur & Hauze. After dissolving this partnership, Wilbur maintained his own practice for the remainder of his working life, dealing primarily with civil cases: real estate transactions, contracts, probate, and street improvements. Wilbur had several longtime clients, including two mining companies in which he held stock, the Pittsburgh Concentrating and Mining Company, and the Ruby Chief Mining and Milling Company.

Wilbur was active outside the legal profession, joining the Covenant Lodge in Chicago, and, like his brother Albert, investing in various businesses. In 1884 he became a co-owner of the McLaughlin Smoke Consumer Company, which marketed a device that lessened the emission of smoke in a boiler and made it more efficient. He marketed this device, with only moderate success, until 1896.

Wilbur had other financial interests in the West. In 1900 he purchased a stamp mill in Pittsburgh, Colorado, which he had previously co-owned. The mill was not a success, as it was situated too far from the mine it was meant to serve to operate efficiently. In 1923, James W. Sheridan, a client, gave Wilbur a fifty year oil and gas lease for 160 acres in Hartley County, Texas. The same year Wilbur and his wife sold 599 acres of Colorado farm land.

George Wilbur never retired, for while he spent a great deal of time with his daughter and grandchildren, he continued to practice law until his death June 23, 1931.

George Wilbur's wife Ellen Georgette Rice (Nellie) was the daughter of Susan C. Rice and George H. Rice. Ellen Rice's uncle was Samuel D. Warren of Boston, founder of the paper manufacturing firm S. D. Warren & Company. The Warrens helped George and Ellen financially, as when her aunt Cornelia Warren bought a house in Oak Park, Illinois and gave the title to Ellen and her sister Susan. Ellen and her two sisters, Susan Warren Rice and Mary C. Rice, attended Rockford Female Seminary in Rockford, Illinois. Ellen remained active in the affairs of Rockford College, as it later came to be known, and served as corresponding secretary for the reunion in 1916.

After graduating from Rockford in 1872, Ellen returned to Belvidere, where her family lived next door to the Wilbur family. The two families were close, and Ellen's sister Susan often cared for Sarah Ann Cook Wilbur when she was ill. Ellen is listed as librarian for the Belvidere Library in The Past and Present of Boone County, Illinois (Chicago, 1877).

Ellen Rice Wilbur's sister Susan suffered from mental illness and lived with Ellen for many years, occasionally staying in asylums. Later Susan was permanently committed to a sanitarium in Peoria, Illinois. Susan Rice died February 25, 1928. Ellen Wilbur survived her husband George by a year, passing away on November 28, 1932.

Albert Harper Wilbur was the younger brother of George W. Wilbur. Very little is known of his early life; he was in school in Belvidere, Illinois during the Civil War, and later studied at least one year at Champaign University. He worked at the P & A railroad office in Belvidere after attending college, and then became a telegraph operator and ticket seller for the Chicago and North Western Railway Company.

In 1875 Albert Wilbur moved west, where he hoped a hard working man could acquire wealth and experience the adventure lacking in Belvidere. His restlessness led to a nomadic existence, rarely staying anywhere more than three years.

Albert first stopped in Nebraska, where he worked on the Union Pacific Railroad Company. From there he went to the Utah Territory and worked at the Western Union Telegraph Company as a telegraph operator, transferring to Carson City, Nevada, and then Reno, where he served as office manager until 1879. During this period, Albert speculated in mining stocks and real estate, with only marginal success. In Reno he became the Grand Worthy Secretary of the Independent Order of Good Templars, Grand Lodge of Nevada.

In 1879 Albert moved to Bodie, California where he worked for a lumber company, G. L. Porter & Company, as bookkeeper and later as business manager. The next year, seeking to avoid another winter in Bodie, Albert moved to Maricopa, Arizona Territory and then to Lathrop, California, working for railroads as train master and agent.

In 1883 Albert Wilbur moved to Deming, New Mexico; San Francisco; then Suisun, California, where he stayed for four years, working as an agent for the Central Pacific Railroad. After moving to Red Bluff, California in 1887, he met Laura Bofinger, daughter of a prominent family there, a Christian Scientist who became a healer later in life. Albert was transferred to Pomona, California in 1890 but returned to Red Bluff the next year to marry her. They had one daughter, Helen, born January 26, 1892.

Albert and Laura lived in Pomona until 1896. During the Depression of 1893 he moved briefly to San Francisco to find work, then became resident agent of the Transatlantic Fire Insurance Company and the Magdeburg Fire Insurance Company in Pomona. His discouragement over tardy commissions prompted his return to the railroads, and in 1896 he moved to Toano, Nevada to work for the Southern Pacific Company.

At the time George Wilbur was involved in an attempt to save the mill he bought near the Pittsburgh Concentrating and Milling Company in Colorado from financial collapse, and Albert, seeking to get out of Toano and the railroad business, seriously entertained the idea of joining George in Colorado to help him with the mill. Albert transferred to Wadsworth, Nevada to work as a ticket clerk, with hopes of being transferred to Colorado, which never happened. Albert returned to San Francisco the next year and worked in the accounting department in the office of freight auditor of the Southern Pacific Company until at least 1902. Nothing is known of Albert or his family for the next twenty years.

Albert is next found in Los Angeles in 1923, retired from the railroads, living on a pension, and actively working on projects to supplement his pension. His daughter Helen had died, and his wife had become a Christian Science healer. Albert invested in land, worked on his "Nature's Own Beauty Clay," a mud-pack for women, and fought stiff opposition, including some from his wife, while attempting to market a tuberculosis cure. In 1926 they moved back to San Francisco. Nothing is known of them after 1931.

George and Ellen Wilbur's daughter Susan Warren Wilbur was born in Oak Park, Illinois January 6, 1893. She attended the public schools in Oak Park and Wellesley College from 1909 to 1913, where she boarded with Katharine Lee Bates, majored in Greek and English Literature, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Upon graduation, she returned to Chicago and attended the University of Chicago, receiving a master of arts in English Literature in 1914. She began her career in literature by reviewing books for Llewellyn Jones, literary editor of the Chicago Evening Post.

In March 1917, Susan Wilbur and Llewellyn Jones were married. They had three children: Llewellyn, Jr. (1919-1995), Cornelia Warren (1920-1990), and George Wilbur (b. 1930). Susan's sons both attended Harvard; her daughter Cornelia was mentally ill and was institutionalized at an early age.

From 1917 to 1922 Susan was assistant editor of Poetry, literary editor of the Continent, and staff editor of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia 's volume on the ancient Mediterranean world. From 1923 to 1933 she joined her husband at the Chicago Evening Post as associate literary editor of the newly established book supplement. During this time she also served as literary editor for Child Life, and for the Chicagoan .

Susan Wilbur Jones had been a supervisor of the Illinois WPA Writer's Project for three years in 1938 when her husband accepted the editorship of the Christian Register in Boston. She moved her household, which as she described in a letter to her alma mater as including "125 years of attic my parents left me in 1931," and returned to school to pursue a masters in Slavic Languages from Radcliffe College. She received her degree in 1944.

Susan wrote several short works, as well as a history entitled Egypt and the Suez Canal (Chicago, 1925). She began a career in translation with the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter in 1927. A Rockefeller grant obtained upon receiving her degree enabled her to translate Gudzy's History of Early Russian Literature in 1949, which she followed with a translation of Romanov's Russia in Manchuria (Ann Arbor, 1952). She switched to Japanese in the 1950s and translated Ages Ago: Thirty-seven Tales from the Konjaku Monogatari Collection (Cambridge, 1959).

Susan's husband, who was British, was a translator of Swedish and Danish works, but was better known for his books of literary criticism, including First Impressions (Freeport, 1925), How to Criticize Books (New York, c. 1928), Art and the Worth-while (New York, c. 1929), and How to Read Books (New York, c. 1930).

In her later years, Susan kept house in Cambridge for her youngest son George, and dabbled in translating. She died November 25, 1969.

The information in this biographical sketch was gleaned from the collection and from biographical information kept in the bibliographic files maintained in the office of the curator of Western Americana.

Note: Names of major correspondents in the collection are underlined.

Joseph Wilbur

Simon Wilbur m. Phebe Roberts

-----Phebe Wilbur m. ? Peck

-----sister m. ? Simmons

----------Mary Adella

---------- Annie E.

----------Emma

----------William F.

----- Betsy Jane m. ? Clows

-----George Wilbur (1823-1858) m. Sarah Ann Cook (1816-1904)

---------- George Willis (1851-1931) m. (1888) Ellen Georgette Rice (d. 1932)

---------------George Rice (1889-1890)

--------------- Susan Warren (1893-1969) m. (1917) Llewellyn Jones (1884-1961)

--------------------Llewellyn (1919-1995)

--------------------Cornelia (1920-1990)

--------------------George (1930- )

---------- Albert Harper m. (1891) Laura L. Bofinger

---------------Helen (b. 1892)

Note: Names of major correspondents in the collection are underlined.

J. Watson (1803-1885)

-----Charles E. (d. 1881)

----------Pearl

-----Mary (d. 1880) m. Lewis ?

-----Estella

----- Henry G. (d. 1886) m. Helen

----------Carrie

----- George W.

----- Marion A. (Kittie)

Nelson (1808-1897) m. Jane

-----Harper (d. 1923)

----- Lydia (d. 1923)

----- Addie L.

-----Sarah A.

Sarah Ann (1816-1904) m. George Wilbur (1823-1858)

-----(see above)

Thomas (1822-1872)

Harper (d. 1825) m. Candace

-----Chauncey Selah

-----George

----- Carrie (b. 1840, adopted by Candace)

----------m1 ?

---------------Fred C.

----------m2. (1876) Albert Gale

Harmon (d. 1882)

-----Hattie

Moses H.

----- Alice M.

-----Nancy

Polly (d. 1888) m. Buel Benton (d. 1888)

----- George m. Mary (Libbie)

----------Mary

----------Homer

----- Willis m. Hattie E.

----------Ettie

----------Willis H. m. (1896) Mattie A. Waldron (d. 1902)

Note: Names of major correspondents in the collection are underlined.

George H. Rice m. (1842) Susan Caroline Warren (1813-1893)

-----Ellen Maria (1846-1848)

----- Susan Warren (1848-1928)

----- Ellen Georgette m. George Willis Wilbur

----------(see above)

-----Mary C. m. Philetus A. Terwilliger

Francis H. Rice (d. 1897) m. Charlotte Smith

Mary Gough

John Warren m. Susannah

-----Samuel Dennis m. Cornelia

---------- Cornelia

----------Samuel Dennis

----------E. P.

----------Fiske

----- Susan Caroline (1813-1893) m1 Joseph Rice

--------------------m2 George H. Rice (see above)

-----12 other brothers and sisters

1851 Nov 6 George Willis Wilbur born

1858 Apr 1 George Wilbur, Sr. dies

1871 NovWorks in livery business

1871 Dec Teaches school in Flora, Illinois

1872 Fall Enrolls at Champaign University

1873 Mar Leaves Champaign University

1873 Apr-May Works for W. G. Leonard in livery business

1874 Feb Becomes Deputy County Clerk of Boone County

1875 Feb Enrolls at Union College of Law in Chicago

1876 Jun Graduates with Bachelor of Law from Union College

1876 Fall Contracts typhoid fever

1876-80 Works at Palmer & Colt; Monroe, Bisbee & Ball; Sheldon & Waterman; Wallace Heckman; and Rogers & Appleton

1884 Joins Covenant Lodge in Chicago

1884 Becomes co-owner of McLaughlin Smoke Consumer Company

Mid 1880s Partnership of Ward & Wilbur

1888 Marries Ellen Georgette Rice

1889 Son George Rice Wilbur born

1890 Feb4 George Rice Wilbur dies

1893-97 Partnership of Wilbur & Hauze

1893 Jan 6 Daughter Susan Warren Wilbur born

1898-1931 Maintains own practice

1904 Dec Mother dies

1923 Receives oil and gas lease to lands in Hartley County, Texas

1923 Sells 599 acres of farm land in Colorado

1931 Jun 23 Dies

1871-72 Studies at Champaign University

1872 In Belvidere, Illinois -- P & A Railroad office

1872-75 In Belvidere, Illinois -- Chicago and North Western Railway Company, telegraph operator and ticket seller

1875 To Nebraska -- Union Pacific Railroad Company

1875 Jul-Sep In Corinne, Utah Territory -- Western Union Telegraph Company, telegraph operator

1875-76 In Carson City, Nevada --Western Union Telegraph Company, telegraph operator

1876 Oct Moves to Reno, Nevada -- Western Union Telegraph Company, office manager

1879 May Leaves Reno

1879 Jun Moves to Bodie, California -- G. L. Porter & Company, bookkeeper, later business manager

1880 Oct Leaves Bodie

1880 Nov In Maricopa, Arizona Territory -- Southern Pacific Railroad Company

1880 Dec Moves to Tucson, Arizona Territory -- Southern Pacific Railroad Company, head telegraph operator

1881 Apr Leaves Tucson

1881 May-Jun In Bodie

1881 Jul In Reno

1881 Aug In Battle Mountain, Nevada

1881 Sep Moves to Lathrop, California -- Central Pacific Railroad Company, telegraph operator, later train master and agent

1883 Apr Leaves Lathrop

1883 May-Jun In Deming, New Mexico -- Southern Pacific Railroad, freight office

1883 Jul-Oct In San Francisco -- Central Pacific Railroad, steamship department

1883 Oct In Sacramento

1883 Nov Moves to Suisun, California -- Central Pacific Railroad, agent

1887 Nov Leaves Suisun

1887 Dec Moves to Red Bluff, California -- Southern Pacific Company

1890 Apr Leaves Red Bluff

1890 May Moves to Pomona, California -- Southern Pacific Company

1891 Feb Marries Laura L. Bofinger

1892 Jan 26 Daughter Helen born

1894 In San Francisco -- Southern Pacific Company, freight office

1895 Works for Transatlantic Fire Insurance Company, resident agent

1896 Magdeburg Fire Insurance Company

1896 Jun Leaves Pomona

1896 Jul Moves to Toano, Nevada -- Southern Pacific Company

1897 Feb Leaves Toano, Nevada

1897 Mar-Dec In Wadsworth, Nevada -- Southern Pacific Company, ticket clerk

1898 Jan Moves to San Francisco -- Southern Pacific Company, accounting department, freight auditor

1902 Mar Last known in San Francisco

1902-1923 [Nothing is known about Albert or his family during this period]

1923 Feb In Los Angeles, retired

1926 Feb Leaves Los Angeles

1926 Mar Moves to San Francisco

1931 Nov Last known of Albert and wife

From the guide to the George W. Wilbur family papers, 1737-1954, 1870-1931, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)