James Wilson

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm going to tell it to you. A man born in Ireland in 1821 crosses an ocean, crosses a continent, and ends up in Brazos County, Texas, riding a circuit that would wear out most men twice his size. That's the story of James Wilson, and it's worth every mile.

Wilson immigrated to the United States in 1842. He was a serious young man with serious ambitions, and the record bears that out. He graduated from Lafayette College in Boston in 1847, then pressed on to Princeton Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1850.

That same year, 1850, he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. The man did not waste time. Now, the church had its eye on Texas.

In 1856, Wilson was sent to Brazos County as a missionary, and what he found was a wide, scattered land full of people who needed congregations and didn't yet have them. So he became a circuit preacher, riding from settlement to settlement, and he started organizing. Wheelock.

Bryan. Centerville. Presbyterian congregations, one after another, seeded across the Brazos Valley by one tireless minister.

His ministry ran fifty-three years. Fifty-three. In 1866, he married Laura Barnes, a published poet, which tells you something about the kind of household that would have been, a preacher and a poet making a life together out on that Texas prairie.

James Wilson was born in 1821 and died in 1904, and when it was over, he and Laura were buried near the site of a church he had founded. Not a monument, not a courthouse, not a grand hall. A church he built from nothing, right there in the valley he had given his life to.

That's where they rest.

What the marker says

(1821-1904) Ireland native James Wilson immigrated to the United States in 1842. He graduated in 1847 from Lafayette College in Boston, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1850, the year he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. Wilson was sent to Texas in 1856 as a missionary in Brazos County. During his 53 year ministry, he served as a circuit preacher and organizer of many Brazos Valley Presbyterian congregations, including those at Wheelock, Bryan and Centerville. He married Laura Barnes, a published poet, in 1866. They are buried near the site of a church he founded. (1997)