His parents taught at the Hilo Mission boarding school founded by David Belden Lyman and his wife.

In 1846, the family moved to teach at a similar school at the Waiʻoli Mission near Hanalei, Hawaii, on the northern coast of the island of Kauaʻi.

[4] He worked with his older brother George Norton Wilcox (1839–1933) on the Princeville plantation owned by Robert Crichton Wyllie in the 1860s while living at Waiʻoli.

[10] He was involved in drafting the 1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and its forceful imposition which put his brother George into the cabinet of King Kalākaua.

[12] Some of his neighbors from Kauaʻi such as William Owen Smith and Sanford B. Dole played major roles in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

His stepdaughter Ethel Kulamanu Mahelona married his nephew Gaylord Parke Wilcox (1881–1970) and inherited Kilohana.

[16] The Hanalei Land Company, which Wilcox formed in 1903, restored the house and rents it to visitors as accommodations or events such as weddings.

[5] In 1922, his widow donated funds for the Albert Spencer Wilcox Building designed by Hart Wood to be the first public library on Kauaʻi.