George Norton Wilcox was born in
Hilo August 15, 1839. His father was
Abner Wilcox and mother was Lucy Eliza Hart. His parents were in the company of
missionaries to Hawaii for the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sailing in 1836. His parents taught at the
Hilo Mission boarding school founded by
David Belden Lyman and his wife. He had one older brother and two younger ones born while at Hilo. In 1846, the family moved to teach at a similar school at the
Waioli Mission near
Hanalei, Hawaii, on the northern coast of the island of
Kauai. There he had four more brothers, although one died young. He graduated from
Punahou School 1850–1860, and worked for
Samuel Gardner Wilder loading a shipload of
guano from
Jarvis Island. He then attended
Yale from 1860 to 1862, where he studied
civil engineering in the
Sheffield Scientific School. When he returned, he and his younger brother Albert worked for
Robert Crichton Wyllie on his
Princeville Plantation. Albert would later buy the Princeville Plantation near Hanalei. George leased and then bought
Grove Farm from
Hermann A. Widemann (1822–1899) starting in 1864. Using his engineering training, he designed an irrigation system to bring water from the wet mountains to the
sugarcane fields, an idea later copied by many other planters. He continued to grow the farm, and invest in related enterprises, such as other plantations on other islands, a guano fertilizer company of his own, and the
Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company. In 1880 he was elected to the house of representatives of the
legislature of the Hawaiian Kingdom. When the upper house (known as the House of Nobles) became an elected body in 1887, he served in it from 1888 to 1892. He was appointed as Minister of the Interior from November 8, 1892, to January 12, 1893. A few days later the
overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii ended the monarchy. The upper house of the legislature then became the senate of the
Republic of Hawaii where he was elected through 1898. After World War I, when the
US Army Corps of Engineers proposed building a harbor on the island, Wilcox bought the entire bond issue to finance
Nawiliwili Harbor. He died January 21, 1933. Since he never married, his estate was left to his nephews and nieces. It was one of the largest estates in the territory at the time. ==Family and legacy==