Background
James G. Wilson was born on April 28, 1832, in Edinburgh, the son of William Wilson by his second wife, Jane Sibbald. The father left Scotland in December 1833 and settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, as bookseller and publisher.
James G. Wilson was born on April 28, 1832, in Edinburgh, the son of William Wilson by his second wife, Jane Sibbald. The father left Scotland in December 1833 and settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, as bookseller and publisher.
In Poughkeepsie, New York, Wilson received his education and became his father's partner.
After a trip to Europe in 1855, he moved to Chicago, where he edited and published several periodicals. The Evangel and the Chicago Examiner (1857) seem to have been failures; one number of the Northwestern Quarterly Magazine appeared in October 1858; the monthly Chicago Record; a Journal, Devoted to the Church, to Literature, and to the Arts lived from April 1, 1857, to March 15, 1862, when it passed into other hands and became the Northwestern Church.
On December 25, 1862, Wilson was commissioned major in the 15th Illinois Cavalry, and on September 14, 1863, colonel of the 4th United States Colored Cavalry. He took part in various movements in the Mississippi Valley, and in the later years of the war served as military agent for New York state in Louisiana.
On March 13, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers. Resigning on June 16, 1865, he thereafter made New York City his home.
His writings were mainly biographical. Seven volumes of newspaper clippings in the New York Public Library testify to his care in preserving news about those whose careers appealed to him. His most extensive work was Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography, which he edited jointly with John Fiske. An active churchman throughout his life, he edited The Centennial History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New York, 1785 - 1885 (1886).
In 1892 - 1893 appeared The Memorial History of the City of New York, from Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, in four volumes. He also edited The Presidents of the United States, by John Fiske and others, which was published in 1894, with later issues in 1898, 1902, 1914. His interest in military affairs is suggested by his Biographical Sketches of Illinois Officers Engaged in the War against the Rebellion of 1861 (1862). His Life and Campaigns of Ulysses Simpson Grant appeared in 1868, and a revision of the same under a slightly different title in 1885.
In 1874 he published Sketches of Illustrious Soldiers, a second edition of which appeared in 1880. With Titus Munson Coan he edited Personal Recollections of the War of the Rebellion: Addresses Delivered Before the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion of the United States, 1883 - 1891 (1891). In 1897 two studies of Grant by him were published - General Grant, in the Great Commanders Series edited by Wilson, and General Grant's Letters to a Friend. He also furnished a life of Grant in 1904 for the Makers of American History Series.
James Grant Wilson died on February 1, 1914, in New York City and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York. By his will he left to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City his collection of signed photographs of rulers and other notables, sleeve links worn by Washington and by Grant, rings with hair from Washington, and other similar trinkets; the legacy was declined by the Museum, and the collection went to the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.
James Grant Wilson was a prolific writer, editor and publisher, who founded the Chicago Record in 1857, the first literary paper in that region. He also wrote much for the periodical press, and made many addresses on characters in American history and literature, most of which appeared also as reprints. In 1894, Wilson was knighted by the Queen Regent of Spain for his services in connection with the erection of a statue of Columbus in New York.
(James Grant’s story of America’s last governmentally untr...)
(Excerpt from Lord Lovelace and the Second Canadian Campai...)
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(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
James G. Wilson was a life member of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and its president, 1886 - 1900; president of the American Ethnological Society, 1900 - 1914; president of the American Authors' Guild (Society of American Authors), 1892 - 1899.
On November 3, 1869, James G. Wilson married Jane Emily Searle Cogswell. They had one daughter.
After the death of his first wife he married, May 16, 1907, Mary Nicholson, widow of James W. A. Nicholson.
Mary Heap was married to James W. A. Nicholson. After the death of her first husband, she married James G. Wilson.
John Fiske was an American philosopher and historian.
