Joseph Morgan Wilcox was born on March 15, 1790, in Killingsworth, Middlesex County, Connecticut, the son of Revolutionary War officer Joseph Wilcox and Phoebe Morgan. On June 15, 1808, he entered the U.S. Military Academy as a cadet, graduated, and was promoted to 1st Lieutenant in the 3rd Infantry. During the War of 1812 he fought against the Creeks. On January 15, 1814, he engaged in a heroic fight with a Creek war party and was tomahawked and scalped on the banks of the Alabama River where it flows between Canton and Prairie Bluff. Two days later he was buried with military honors at Fort Claiborne. Wilcox County was named in his memory by an Act of the General Assembly of Alabama on December 13, 1819.