Wilson was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina in 1810 to parents Mary Erwin Wilson (daughter of Alexander Erwin, a revolutionary soldier and legislator, from Buckinghamshire County, Pennsylvania) and Review John Makemie Wilson, Doctor of Divinity a "distinguished Presbyterian minister and a great educator." In fact, Joseph"s early education came entirely under his father tutelage until he entered Washington College in Virginia at the age of 13 in the Junior class.
Two years later, he graduated with honors at the age of only 15.
He is the grandfather of George Edward Wilson, Junior., who served as Mayor of Charlotte from 1929 to 1931. A few years later, he entered the practice of law in Charlotte and surrounding areas, commencing a highly successful career as a lawyer lasting about fifty years. They had four children that lived to maturity: James, Harvey, Frank and Anna.
Prior to the civil war, it was said that he was "earnestly opposed to secession" from the union, and entered politics for the first time in his life, offering himself as a delegate to the convention to defeat secession.
However, once the state officially seceded, he "seceded with it, and earnestly, loyally supported the cause she espoused." At the end of the Civil War, Wilson was sent to be a delegate at the Peace Convention. In 1866, near the height of the Post-Civil War Reconstruction Era, Wilson was asked to join and subsequently lead the North Carolina Senate.
However, his term was interrupted the following year by the enactment of military rule over the American southern states. Through multiple successive acts between March and July of 1867, the United States. Congress, split the former confederate states into five military districts, under the jurisdiction of military commanders, with North Carolina placed in the Second Military District, effectively ending the existing state senate.
When the Senate was later restored, the office of "Speaker" was replaced by the office of "President pro tempore of the North Carolina Senate", while the Lieutenant Governor became the presiding officer of the Senate.
Wilson died in 1884 and is buried in Mecklenberg County.
