My Genealogy Hound

W. THOMAS WILSON is a son of Chester and Hannah (Koch) Wilson, and was born in Johnstown, Montgomery county, New York, on April 7, 1817. His grandfather was a New England farmer of English descent and a federalist in politics. He died at the age of fifty-six, while his wife died at the age of seventy-eight. Subject’s father was born in Belchertown, five miles from Amherst College, Massachusetts, and was a saddler by trade. At one time during his life he had been a resident of Boston, Massachusetts, where he carried on his trade of saddle making. He was a Jeffersonian democrat, a presbyterian, and died at the age of seventy years. His mother died at the age of ninety-nine years.

W. Thomas Wilson came with his father to Chautauqua county in the year 1828. He attended the common schools, and afterwards continued his education in a private academy at Forestville, New York. After his graduation from that place, he taught school for some twelve years, at the conclusion of which he took up the study of medicine, which he pursued for two years, and then relinquished it, and commenced the study of law. He was admitted to practice before the several courts of Chautauqua county in 1844, and in 1870 was admitted to practice before all the courts in the State of New York, at Buffalo. In 1868 he became justice of sessions, which position he held five years, after which he took up the special practice of pension law, and has been a pension attorney for the past thirty-eight years, justice for twenty-six years, and notary public for six years. He is a democrat in politics and an agnostic in religion.

W. Thomas Wilson was first married in 1836 to Maria Louisa Rosenbaum, a daughter of Garrett Rosenbaum, of Albany, New York. They had one child, a son, — Thomas L. Wilson, a journalist. His second wife was Sarah M. Atkins, daughter of the late Almon Atkins, whom he married in May, 1874.