Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/582

548. In 1852 he was a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket. Pour years after retiring from legal practice he was elected to the National house of representatives, serving from 1 Dec, 1873, till 3 March, 1875. He was a judge of the Maryland circuit court from 1878 till 1884, when he was elected United States senator for the term that will end 3 March, 1891.

WILSON, Franklin, clergyman, b. in Balti- more, Md., 8 Dec, 1822. He was graduated at Brown in 1841, studied theology in Newton theo- logical seminary, and was ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1846, but lias held no pastorate, and has preached irregularly, on account of physical in- firmities. He has served various worthy causes gratuitously, besides giving to them large sums of money. For many years, beginning with 1851, he was the editor of " The True Union," a Baptist weekly paper published in Baltimore, and he has long been a trustee of Columbian university, Wash- ington, D. C. He is the author of a prize essay on "The Duties of Churches to their Pastors," and of several essays and tracts. In 1865 Columbian uni- versity conferred on him the degree of D. D.

WILSON, George Francis, manufacturer, b. in Uxbridge, Mass., 7 Dec, 1818 ; d. in East Provi- dence, R. I., 19 Jan., 1883. He was apprenticed to the trade of wool-sorting at the age of seventeen, and at the end of three years became an expert in the business and familiar with all the machinery in the mill. Being ambitious of obtaining a bet- ter education, he entered the academy at Shelburne Falls, Mass., where he subsequently became a teacher. In 1844 he removed to Chicago, where he opened an academy that soon became a flour- ishing institution. He returned to the east in 1848 and settled in Providence, where he devoted himself to the manufacturing business. In 1855, with Eben N. Horsford, he began the manufacture of chemicals, under the style of George F. Wilson and Co., and two year's later their establishment became known as the Rumford chemical works. The direct management of the works was controlled by him, and by his knowledge of mechanics he was able to devise various improvements in the ma- chinery, resulting in the more economical manu- facture of the, goods. He also invented an im- provement in the manufacture of steel, a revolving boiler for paper manufacture, and several improve- ments in illuminating apparatus for light-houses. Mr. Wilson devoted considerable attention to agri- culture, to methods of fertilization of soils, and to the breeding of stock, while the range of his scien- tific knowledge was unusual for one whose life was almost entirely devoted to business pursuits. The degree of A. M. was conferred on him by Brown in 1872. He was a member of the city school com- mittee, and was twice elected to represent Provi- dence in the general assembly. During his resi- dence in East Providence, whither he removed in 1861, he was for many years associated with the management of municipal affairs. He left $100,000 to Brown university, and $50,000 to Dartmouth college, to be used for scientific purposes. WILSON, George Henry, musical writer, b. in Lawrence, Mass., 18 Feb., 1854. He was edu- cated at the Lawrence high-school, and since 1874 has been a clerk in the custom-house at Boston. He is also the musical critic of the Boston " Trav- eller," and in 1883 began the " Boston Musical Year-Book," the title of which was changed in 1886 to the " Musical Year-Book of the United States." Since 1885 he has prepared annually an analytical and historical programme of the concerts of the Boston symphony orchestra.

WILSON, Henry, statesman, b. in Farming- ton. N. H.. 16 Feb., 1812 ; d. in Washington, D. C, 22 Nov., 1875. He was the son of a farm-laborer, whose ancestors were from the north of Ireland, and at the age of ten was apprenticed to a farmer till the age of twenty- one. During those eleven years of service he received not more than twelve months' school- ing altogether, but read more than a thousand volumes. When his apprentice- ship terminated in December, 1833, he set out from Farming- ton on foot in search of work, which he found at Natick, Mass., in the house of a shoemaker. On attaining his ma- jority he had his name, which was originally Jeremiah Jones Colbaith, changed by legislative enactment to the simpler one of Henry Wilson. He learned the trade of his employer and followed it for two years, earning enough money to return to New Hampshire and study in the academies at Stafford, Wolfborough, and Concord At the same time he made his appearance in public life as an ardent Abolitionist during the attempts that were made in 1835 to stop the discussion of the slavery question by violent means. The person to whom he had intrusted his savings became in- solvent, and in 1838, after a visit to Washington, where his repugnance to slavery was intensified by the observation of its conditions, he was compelled to relinquish his studies and resume shoemaking at Natick. In 1840 he appeared in the political can- vass as a supporter of William Henry Harrison, addressing more than sixty Whig meetings, in which he was introduced as the " Natick cobbler." In that year and the next he was elected to the Massachusetts house of representatives, and then after a year's intermission served three annual terms in the state senate.

He was active in organizing in 1845 a conven- tion in Massachusetts to oppose the admission of Texas into the Union as a slave state, and was made, with John Greenleaf Whittier, the bearer of a petition to congress against the proposed annexa- tion, which was signed by many thousands of Mas- sachusetts people. In the following year he pre- sented in the legislature a resolution condemnatory of slavery, supporting it with a comprehensive and vigorous speech. In 1848 he went as a delegate to the Whig national convention in Philadelphia, and on the rejection of anti-slavery resolutions spoke in protest and withdrew. On his return he de- fended his action before his constituents, and soon afterward bought the Boston " Republican " news- paper, which he edited for two years, making it the leading organ of the Free-soil party. He was chair- man of the Free-soil state committee in 1849-52. In 1850 he returned to the state senate, and in the two following years he was elected president of that body. He presided over the Free-soil nation- al convention at Pittsburg in 1852, and in the en- suing canvass acted as chairman of the national committee of the party. As chairman of the state