WILKINSON 1236 WILLARD portant information gathered through inter- views with distinguished alienists in Europe and America as to current methods of treating and managing the insane. In view of the experiences and observations thus obtained, Dr. Wilkins was selected one of the commission to find a site and to pre- pare plans for the additional asylum provided by the legislature of 1872, and in the following year, with his confreres, founded the Napa State Asylum for the Insane. He was elected resident physician of the Napa Asylum in March, 1876, and had he lived a few days longer would have completed his fifteenth year as its superintendent. He died of influenza, February 10, 1891. Institutional Care of the Insane in the U. S. and Canada, Henry M. Kurd, 1917. Wilkinson, James (1757-1825) James Wilkinson, physician, soldier and ad- venturer, was born in Calvert County, Mary- land, in 1757. He gave up the study of medi- cine to enter the War of the Revolution, serv- ing with Arnold in the Quebec campaign, then with Gates. He rose to the rank of colonel and early in an unscrupulous way to that of brigadier-general. When Colonel John Hardin, of Kentucky, penetrated the British lines he turned back to the American forces and meet- ing Wilkinson, communicated his discoveries and begged him to give the information to General Gates. This Wilkinson hastened to do, making himself instead of, Hardin the hero of the adventure ; so when Burgoyne sur- rendered, Wilkinson was made bearer of the news to Congress. He was eighteen days on the journey and when it was proposed in Congress to give him a sword. Dr. John Witherspoon said: "I think ye'd better gie the lad a pair of spurs." So Congress refrained from the gift, but appointed him a brigadier- general by brevet; this rank he resigned later when officers of his own grade petitioned Congress to rescind his appointment. From 1779 to 1781 he served as clothier-general to the army. He went to Lexington, Kentucky, and look- ing about him for means to improve his for- tune saw that money could readily be obtained if he could secure from the Spaniards the right to trade with New Orleans, for Missis- sippi was closed to American commerce and western produce was spoiling for lack of a market. He began by gaining the good-will of the commandant of Natchez by the gift of a pair of thoroughbreds, .then loaded a boat with Kentucky produce and sent it down the Mississippi, himself going to New Orleans by land. The boat reached New Orleans be- fore him and was seized by the authorities, but when Wilkinson appeared it was released and the Spanish governor gave him an un- limited trading permission. Wilkinson further allied himself with Spain by endeavoring to separate the West from the East to protect Spanish possessions, and was to receive a pension for his treachery to his country; but his scheme failed and in 1791 he applied for reinstatement in the army. His recommenda- tion was that unemployed he was "dangerous to the public quiet, if not to the safety of Kentucky." He was appointed lieutenant- colonel and performed good service against the northwestern Indians; in 1792 he became brigadier-general, and when General Wayne died in 1796 was given chief command. How- ever, he did not cease to be a traitor and is said to have received a Spanish pension as late as 1800. He had been the intimate of Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr and he dis- closed to the government Burr's plan to form a southwestern empire. He was implicated in the conspiracy and was court-martialed, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. In 1805 Wilkinson became governor of the territory of Louisiana; in 1813, major-general, but had a disagreement with Wade Hampton that resulted in a court of inquiry, which exonerated him in 1815. At the end of the war he was discharged. He went to live on his plantation near New Orleans, then turned up in Mexico City as applicant for a land grant, and acted as agent for the American Bible Society. At the age of fifty-six he mar- ried Miss Trudeau, who was thirty years his junior. He died in Mexico City December 25, 1825, from "the combined effects of climate and of opium." He wrote "Memoirs of My Own Time" (Philadelphia, ISie). Encyclop. Brit., 11th ed. Amer. Biog. Diet.. William Allen, D. D., 73rd ed., Boston, 1857. Willard, DeForest (1946-1910) DeForest Willard, orthopedist, was a native of Newington, Hartford County, Connecticut. He was born March 23, 1846, son of Daniel H. and Sarah Maria Deming Willard, both his parents descendants from families closely identified with the development of America in the Colonial period. Dr. Willard was in the ninth generation from Major Simon Willard, the founder of Concord, Massachusetts (1632). He went to Hartford High School and entered Yale in 1863 but did not graduate. Then to the University of Pennsylvania, where he took his M. D. in 1867. He received the degree
