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While in college Wilkinson became a member of the Sigma Phi fraternity. He also
represented our Class in the Wide Awake Club, a college political society organized in the
interest of the Republican campaign in 1860.
Soon after leaving college our classmate went into the army. He served as captain
and major in the 128th New York Volunteer Infantry; was judge advocate of the Nineteenth
Army Corp; aid-de-camp, assistant adjutant-general, and inspector-general, at different
periods; was in active service until the close of the war. His range of campaign duty covered
the Gulf coast and lower Mississippi Valley, where he took part in the Red River campaign;
the mountain region of West Virginia, where he served with Sheridan in the Shenandoah
Valley and was severely wounded in the Battle of Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864; and on
the Atlantic coast, at Savannah, Georgia. He was honorably discharged at the close of the
war, receiving the two brevet ranks of lieutenant colonel and colonel of United States
Volunteers.
Wilkinson passed his professional course at Fowler's State and National Law School,
in Poughkeepsie, and was admitted to the bar, in 1866, in that city, where he opened a law
office, and where he has been in active practice.
Wilkinson is a member of the University, Century, City and Lawyers' Clubs, all of
New York City; of the Adirondack League Club - military - and of the Loyal Legion. He
is also a warden of St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church of Poughkeepsie.
June 18, 1867, he married Julia Gifford, daughter of Elihu Gifford and his wife, Eliza
Starbuck Gifford, of Hudson, New York.
They have had four children:
Edith, born April 7, 1868.
Gifford, born March 23, 1870. He was graduated at Williams in the Class of 1891;
studied law in the Harvard Law School, and is now practicing law in Seattle, Washington.
Emily, born September 10, 1871.
Robert, born September 14, 1873. A graduate of Yale in 1895, and of Harvard Law
School in 1898, and is now practicing at 45 Wall Street, New York City. He married, May
22, 1902, Camelia, daughter of Charles S. and Charlotte (Holbrook) Maurice.
Since the above was written, a dispatch has been received stating that Wilkinson died
suddenly at Liverpool, England, June 29, 1903. He went abroad for his health. He is
supposed to have died of heart disease.
Source:
Class of Sixty-Three Williams College Fortieth Year Report, by
the Class Historian, Thomas Todd Printer, Boston, 1903
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