Howard Haines Brinton and Anna Shipley Cox Brinton - Haverford ...

From: AIF News, July 1945
Howard & Anna Brinton Papers
Coll. no. 1189
p. 4
"The farm boy who milked ten cows through school is retiring at 70 as one of the
nation's chemical authorities." He had served as chief of the Bureau of Chemistry of the
California Department of Agriculture In 1945, he had two ranches in California and had
published over 100 scientific papers. But before WWI, he helped save babies from
beriberi in the Philippines.
Cox graduated from Stanford University in 1902 with a master's degree. He taught
chemistry and then began studies and travel in Europe, receiving his Ph.D. cum laude
from Breslau's Koniglische Institut in 1904 with chemistry as a major and philosophy,
physics and geology as minors. He traveled to Finland, Sweden and Russia before
returning to Stanford and in 1905, became a physical chemist for the Bureau of Science
for the government of the Philippine Islands in charge also of weights and measures and
mineral analysis. While there, he rose to the position of chief of the Division of
Chemistry, Philippine Bureau of Science in 1910 and later became its director.
Philippine diet consisted largely of vitamin-deficient rice. By treating first babies, and
then their mothers, Cox and his staff were able to conquer beriberi. Cox also drafted food
and drug laws for the islands. He edited the Philippine Journal of Science for eight years
and collected Philippine photos which had intensive Army and Navy study and was
instrumental in assembling the best and largest scientific library in Asia.
In 1920, Alvin Cox and his family returned to America for 12 years where he was an
engineer and chemist and wrote articles on the Philippines for technical journals. He also
was instrumental in creating an agricultural code for CA regarding spraying of fruits and
vegetables, fertilizing materials and economic poisons.
Alvin Cox was the son of Benjamin and Mary Morris Cox. He married Mary Amelia
Barnett in the early 1900s and their children were Mary, Alvin and Annis.. He was
buried at Oak Hill in San Jose, CA. Another son of Benjamin and Mary Cox was Charles
Ellwood Cox who married Lydia Shipley Bean in 1884 and their daughter was Anna
Shipley Cox, born in 1887, who married Howard Brinton (HC 1904) and that is why we
have these photographs.
Photocopy of Cox as young and grown man in box 50, "Cox family genealogical
papers"
Dean C. Worcester (1866-1924) who is credited in the National Geographic Magazine
(v. 22, 1911) as being the photographer of our Philippine photos of the Bontoc peoples
(box 50, coll. 1189) was a scientist, writer, businessman, etc. and first visited the
Philippines as a member of the Am. Scientific expedition in 1887 and died there in 1924.
He was appointed by Pres. McKinley to the Second Philippine Commission where he was
agriculture administrator where he concentrated on public health. From 1901, he was
Secretary of the Interior in the Philippines from 1901-1913.
He is noted as being the photographer of the Philippine photos in the National
Geographic Magazine of March 1911,. And some of those photos are the same as in our
collection with the same titles.