Photo: Daderot., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Stephen Wilcox was born in Westerly in 1830. He had little formal schooling but a talent for machinery.
Steam boilers in his day often exploded, killing workers and passengers. Wilcox worked on a design that ran water through tubes heated by the fire, which was much safer.
Babcock & Wilcox
In 1867 Wilcox and his childhood friend George Babcock patented a water-tube boiler. The company they founded, Babcock & Wilcox, became one of the largest boiler makers in the world. Its boilers powered factories, electric plants and ships, and later the company built equipment for nuclear power.
Wilcox Park
Wilcox died in 1893. His widow, Harriet, set aside land in the center of Westerly as a park in his memory, and Wilcox Park opened in 1898. It was laid out by Warren Manning, who had worked for Frederick Law Olmsted.
The park is next to the Westerly Library, and both are run by the Westerly Library and Wilcox Park organization. It hosts the Summer Pops concert and Shakespeare in the Park.
Wilcox is buried in Westerly’s River Bend Cemetery.
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