Harvey Henderson Wilcox - Hollywood Years

Hollywood Years

Harvey and Ida moved from Topeka to Los Angeles in early 1884 and tradition says that Harvey rode in the baggage car with two of his prized horses. In Los Angeles Harvey formed the real estate company of Wilcox and Shaw. Harvey and Ida had one child, a son named Harry, who died in 1886 at the age of 18 months. Family tradition says that to console themselves over the death of their baby, Harvey and Ida would take buggy rides to the beautiful canyons west of Los Angeles. Harvey purchased one of their favorite areas for $150 per acre. It was in an agricultural area of fig and apricot orchards. Harvey tried his hand at raising fruit, but failed and decided to subdivide the land, selling lots for $1,000 each. His wife named the tract "Hollywood." On February 1, 1887 Harvey filed a plat of the subdivision with the Los Angeles County Recorder's office.

Harvey and Ida were not the only members of the family to move to California. At his encouragement, his sister, Sarah Luke, brother-in-law Elisha Luke, their daughter and son-in-law, Sam and Rosetta Young, with their young son, Almon, and Harvey's recently re-married brother Lewis, left Ogden in February 1887 to settle in Los Angeles where Elisha would also become a real estate agent and land developer. The "Blissfield Advance" said in its Friday, February 18, 1887, edition that "Sam Young and wife and Elisha Luke and wife started for California last Thursday. Thus Ogden loses two of its staunch farmers, and the Prohibs, two valuable members."

Their mother, Azubah, probably accompanized them. Lewis Wilcox would soon leave California to return to Lenawee County where he would continue as a minister of the United Brethren church in Dundee, Michigan until his death ten years later. Azubah died in Los Angeles in 1888 and was buried on the Luke family lot in Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery.

Harvey's brother, Horace, is often credited as being a founder of Hollywood, but Horace, who was one of Harvey's younger brothers, stayed in Michigan where he married first Amanda McCourtie and after her death in 1880, Martha Lord. Horace raised purebred Shropshire sheep on his farm in Woodstock Township, Lenawee County, Michigan, until his death in 1916.

Interestingly, there is no original source that says Harvey H. Wilcox was a Prohibitionist, although he probably was. The only known active Prohibitionists in the family were his sister, Sarah, and her husband, Elisha Luke, and almost certainly Harvey's brothers, twins Lewis and Luther, both of whom were ministers.