James Wilson (1833 - 1866)

Born 1833 in Indiana, United States

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 1866 at about age 33 in Laclede, Missouri, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Cliff Caruthers [send private message]

Biography

James was born in 1833. He passed away in 1866.

From Find a Grave: Jim Wilson was born about 1833 in Indiana, likely the son of Andrew and Jane (Sage) Wilson; actual records do not confirm this, but descendants' DNA tests have established that Jim's grandfather was George C. Wilson, and Andrew the most likely of George's sons to be Jim's father.

Jim was living in Kansas in 1854, when he was married to Mary Ann Metcalf, and they were living in Laclede County, Missouri as of 1856, where he received a land grant in the Hooker Township of that county. By 1860, they had moved west to Vernon County, Missouri, but were back in or near Laclede County by the close of the war.

A story told by Jim's daughter, Molly (Wilson) Breedlove, is that Jim was killed by a bushwacker in the winter of 1865/1866. Bushwackers were Confederate irregulars who had refused to surrender following the end of the Civil War, and who continued to fight a guerrilla war in rural Missouri, terrorizing its citizens. Jim was killed by such an attack, and his body either buried in an unknown spot or left for scavenging animals. His body was never recovered.

According to the same story, Jim's widow answered her door a week or two after his disappearance to find a stranger asking for a food, and wearing a recognizable article of Jim's clothing. This was how she learned of his fate. She later remarried to Hosea Coleman.

Sources

• Ancestry.com. Global, Find a Grave Index for Burials at Sea and other Select Burial Locations, 1300s-Current [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/152288392:60541?ssrc=pt&tid=169656124&pid=102195116274

• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/188309329/james-wilson