“Brother Wilson was born in Talbot County, Georgia. Having completed his education and attained his majority shortly before the war, (Civil War) he moved to what was then Macon, but is now Bullock County, Alabama and engaged in teaching school. In that profession, as in everything else he undertook, he was zealous, faithful, and thorough, winning the respect of his pupils and the confidence and esteem of his patrons. When the first tocsin of war sounded, Brother Wilson went to the front and nobly served his country through all the hardships and gloom of that terrible strife.

Some few years after the war we first find his name among the representatives to this Grand body, and he had been here but a short time when his ability, earnestness, and devotion to the principles of the fraternity, had marked him as a leader of the Craft. In 1869 he was elected Junior Grand Warden, and in 1873 he was elected to fill the chair in the East, thus within a few short years after his introduction to this Body, the was elevated to the position of the greatest dignity and highest honor within the gift of Masons. As a presiding officer he was firm but courteous, dignified but gentle, quick and ready in his rulings, but accurate and impartial. The high posers and prerogatives of the office were never claimed or exercised except the advancement of Masonic virtues and the good of the Craft. His decisions on questions of Masonic law are models of that character, force and terseness that is characteristic of a mind endowed with a fine common sense and a will that is unbending in its determination to do right.

In private and in public life, around the domestic circle, and in his associations with his neighbors and the public, his example was one of which our Order may well feel proud, and to which we can point as worthy of emulation. A devoted and loving husband an affectionate and tender, yet firm parent, a true and faithful friend; a public spirited and patriotic citizen, his home was a charmed circle, his friends were numerous, and his life filled with instances of unselfish efforts to further the interests of his church, his neighbors and his country….
Bro. Wilson passed away in 1882.”