My Genealogy Hound

JOSEPH M. WILSON, M. D., of Birmingham, Marshall Co., Ky., is a native of Hancock County, where he was born in the year 1835. He is the eldest in a family of five children of Robert J. and Nancy Wilson, nee Macklin, both of whom were born in Boone County, Ky., and who died in Hancock County. The Rev. Christopher Wilson, a Baptist minister, was the paternal grandfather of our subject. Dr. Wilson passed his boyhood days in his native county, where he served an apprenticeship to the trade of printer, which, however, he discontinued at the age of twenty years, at which time he began selling drugs in the town of Hawesville, Ky. He prosecuted this line of trade for five years; then began the study of medicine preparatory to a professional life. His preliminary reading was performed under the tutorship of Dr. T. Holmes. In 1861 he entered the Kentucky school of medicine of Louisville, graduating therefrom in the following year, and immediately entered on the practice of his profession, locating for one year at Stephensport, Breckenridge Co., Ky. After practicing in Hancock County and in the city of Louisville, Ky., he removed in 1866 to Marshall County, locating in the town of Birmingham, where he has since continued, enjoying an extensive and lucrative practice. He is president of the Marshall County Medical Association, to which body he is an important factor. He possesses an abundant physical energy which enables him, besides performing his professional duties, to have special supervision of his farming interests. Dr. Wilson possesses none of that affected style, nor pretension to exterior display, which so often passes current for professional ability, but is a plain, commonplace man of real worth and an untiring advocate of temperance reform. He has been twice married; first in Louisville, Ky., in 1861, to Miss Sallie Holmes, daughter of M. G. Holmes of that city. She died in Birmingham in 1877, leaving three children: Richard, Robert and Florence Wilson. His present wife, to whom he was married in 1879, was Miss Maggie, daughter of John Jagars, of Hancock County. The result of this union is Walter S. and Thomas H. Wilson. Besides the children above named, two have died: Rosamond H. and Joseph M. (See portrait of Dr. Wilson.)