Son of George Deliverance Wilson and Mary Ellen Johnson

Married Julia Dedamia Johnson, 26 Jul 1867, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah.

Children - Gladys Lovina Wilson, Mary Ellen "Maizie" Wilson, David Johnson Wilson, Martha Harriet Wilson, Julia Edith Wilson, Sarah Centenna Wilson, June Rose Wilson, George Benjamin Wilson, Esther Delcina Wilson, Pearl Melissa Wilson, Ruth Bloomfield Wilson.

Married Miriam Adelia Cox, 1 Jul 1895. While living in Diaz, Chihuahua, Mexico they went to be married in Deming, Luna, New Mexico to be married by a Mormon authority.

Children - Stella Wilson, Orville Cox Wilson, Adelia Merle Wilson, Mary Julia Wilson, David Iddo Wilson, George Fairchild Wilson, Marcia Ellen Wilson, Joseph Hyrum Wilson.

THE LIFE OF DAVID JOHNSON WILSON by Ester Delcina Wilson

Lewis George Deliverance Wilson, father of David Johnson Wilson, was born at Chittendon, Vermont, December 28, 1807. He was the son of Deliverance Wilson Jr. and Lovina Fairchild of English descent. His forefather, Robert, died in 1644 in England. Benjamin Wilson, his son, came from London, England in 1665 and settled in Massachusetts.

When a young man, George Deliverance Wilson, my grandfather, contracted consumption and commenced to travel for his health. He heard of the restored gospel and came to Kirtland, Ohio to investigate. The Prophet gave him a Book of Mormon. He asked how he might find out if it were true, and the Prophet said, "Read it, and if not satisfied read it again." Reading resulted in his conversion and of his father's family. Grandfather was in the last stages of consumption. After his baptism he speedily recovered, and during the years of 1847 and 1848 he worked in a shop repairing wagons. He then followed the church to Nauvoo.

In 1842 he married Mary Ellen Johnson, sister of the Patriarch B. F. Johnson. Mary Ellen, not having the best of health, sought a blessing of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He promised her she should become a mother in Israel. This promise was fulfilled in the birth of my father, David J. Wilson, born June 7, 1842 in Nauvoo, Illinois.

Later at the birth of another son, George Jacob, his mother passed away and the infant soon followed. My father David was then left in the care of a loving grandmother, Julia Hills Johnson, who was the mother of 16 children of her own and caring for three other motherless children. The Prophet had been a frequent visitor in her home up to the time of his death and left his fine influence there.

My father had only faint recollections of those early days of persecutions but remembers looking out the window one morning and seeing the Nauvoo Temple in flames. He also knew the fear of the mob who drove them from their home. He loved his grandmother dearly, and the early training she gave stayed with him throughout his life. He had a faint recollection of his own dear mother holding him on her knee and calling him her Manio and singing to him "Sweet Hour of Prayer."

David's father was one of the volunteers to go with the Mormon Battalion, so Father saw little of him for several years. However, after much privation and suffering, his father returned to the States, earned enough money to buy a new outfit, wagon, mules, etc., and wanted to take my father with him back to Utah, but the folks said, "It would break grandmother's heart to part with David after she has kept him so long." Yet David regretted much not going with his father, for his beloved grandmother soon died, and he was left with relatives who were not so considerate to him.

At the age of eleven or twelve, in order to get to his father in Utah, he had to walk barefooted, driving cows all the way. He carried with him the treasures his mother left: a lock of hair, a half dozen teaspoons, a string of gold beads. It was a happy reunion to be with his father again.

Up to this time his schooling was very limited. Helping his father build and run sawmills did not allow much schooling, but he remembered the teachings of the Prophet that "The Glory of God is Intelligence." So he applied himself every spare moment and became an educated man.

He was a Black Hawk War Veteran and on one occasion his horse gave out, and he was left in the snow. When help came his foot was frozen, which bothered him the rest of his life.

He was married to Julia Didamia Johnson July 26, 1868 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. They made their first home in Spring Lake, Utah where their first four children were born: Julia Edith, David J. Jr., Pearl Melissa, and Mary Ellen. They spent the first nine years of their married life here; and then in 1875, with a yen for the timber and to be with his father again, he took mother and children to Southern Utah where his father, now married again, was rearing a family. The climate there was very cold, and they missed the lovely fruit and vegetables raised in the warmer climates. Here my father built a large two-story house of hewn logs, and it is here that I have my earliest recollections of my parents, one of which stands out.

It was my sister Mary Ellen's eight birthday in January, and the river was frozen thick with ice. The three older children had been baptized on their birthdays. Rather than having her wait until spring, Father made a large box which they filled with enough warm water for the baptism. Then Father gathered us together for family prayers before Mazie, as we called her, was baptized.

It was always Father's delight to have a peaceful happy home and to get for his family the things that were for their advancement and education. And above all it was his fine example of self-control which counted most. When I hear the quotation from the Bible, "He that is slow to anger is greater then the mighty, and he that ruleth his Spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." I always associate it with my father. I never knew him to take any of the things forbidden in the Word of Wisdom, to eat between meals, to swear, or get angry and scold or whip when in anger, and if at all with only the tiniest willows. I never knew him to miss family prayers. He was a very quiet and unassuming man who preached a sermon only in his actions and few words.

On one occasion when we were living in Diaz, Mexico, the governor of Chihuahua and his aids came to visit our colony. A big program and eats were prepared for them, and of course coffee was most essential. I was helping serve; the other girls sipped coffee, and I did too. My father came in one day; they offered him a cup, and I heard him say, "If I take coffee, one of my children might form the habit." I think I have never tasted coffee from that day to this.

At Hillsdale three more children, Sarah Centenna, Ester Delcena, and George Benjamin were added to their family. In 1880 the Johnsons were moving to Arizona; and Father and Mother, now tired of the cold, took their seven children and joined them in Tempe.

The Johnson family were now quite numerous and were organized in church activities as well as in happy family reunions and social gatherings in the school house or in the old bowery. In the spring Father and Mother were afflicted with chills and fever, and our beloved oldest sister, Edith, contracted typhoid and died. When we moved out east of Tempe, six of us children walked two miles to school.

Harriet and Rose were both born in Tempe, Harriet by and river and Rose east of Tempe. In 1887 the Johnson family were moving to Mesa, and we again followed. Father built us a home next to Aunt Delcena Babbitt. Our old home still stands west of the Lincoln school. Here we received word of the death of our grandfather, George D. Wilson, who attained the ripe old age of eighty while living in Hillsdale, Utah.

The first day of January, 1888, our sister Gladys was born, and in the same year, July 5, we left Mesa for Mexico. We arrived in Mexico August 27, 1888 on brother Ben's birthday, December 3, 1890. In Colonia Diaz, Chihuahua, Mexico our sister Ruth was born, and how the whole family did rejoice over her arrival. A few days later, our grandfather B. F. Johnson came from Mesa and lived with us for a time.

Father was very industrious and capable man and made employment for all his boys and girls when we were not needed in the house. He raised broom corn and made brooms which supplied the colonies; and with his three-hundred stands of bees, he supplied them with honey. We thought our father could do anything. He also made molasses, was a carpenter, horticulturist, blacksmith and gardener.

It was here in Diaz that we had our happiest times together in our large adobe house with its spacious front room. Father had it built with the help of Mexican labor as well as with that of his family. He managed to build from the foundation up, making panel doors and sashes for the windows and cutting all intricate rafters for the hip roof. It was here the neighbors came for parties and dances while our father's cousin, Stephen Wilson, played the violin and we accompanied him on the organ. Sister Mazie used to play the organ while we gathered around and sang. She taught us many songs which we still sing.

We also had the grand privilege of some of the Apostles staying in our home when they came to visit the colonies. Brigham Young, John Henry Smith, and Apostle Teasdale came at different times.

About this time Father took another wife, Miriam Adelia Cox, by whom he raised a family of eight children – four boys and four girls. Because of poor health, about 1896 or 1897 Father moved to Sonora, Mexico where by faith and prayer and a warmer climate he was healed. Most of his older children were married by this time. Here he worked hard with my brother Ben's help to build homes and gristmill.

He suffered many reverses while clearing his farm of mesquite and putting up the mill. Six months before the Saints were driven from Mexico Father said, "The move is northward now," so with what little he could take besides his families he drove to Mesa and stayed a few months, then went on to Southern Utah. There on September 19, 1912, he was laid to rest, by the side of his father at the age of 69 in Hillsdale, Utah.