JAMES P. WILSON. So long has Mr. Wilson resided in Knox county that he is numbered among its early settlers and from the age of twenty years he has made his own way in the world, so that whatever success he has achieved is the just reward of his labors. He now lives on section 24, Pike township, where he owns and operates a good tract of land. Mr. Wilson was born in this township May 30, 1839. His grandfather, Aaron Wilson, became one of the pioneer settlers of this county, as did Lewis Wilson, the father of our subject, who took up his abode here when a young man. He married Hannah Cochran, a native of the countv and a representative of one of its early families. When she was a maiden of ten summers she attended a school taught by the gentleman whom she was afterward to marry. James P. is their second living child and was reared in Pike township, where he also acquired his education, pursuing his. studies in a log school house with a clapboard roof. He re- mained at home until twenty years of age and then started out upon an independent business career. At the time of his marriage he located upon a rented farm and later purchased fifty acres of land, upon which he lived for a year, removing thence to his present home on section 24. He has carried on agricultural pursuits throughout his entire life and thereby acquired a comfortable competence. January 20, 1861, Mr. Wilson was united in marriage to Miss Ruth Reed, also a native of Pike township, born September 24. 1836, on the farm which is now her home. She is a daughter of John and Nancy ( Phillips) Reed, pioneer settlers of Knox county. They were natives of Maryland but were married in Knox county, to which place the mother had also come from Maryland when a widow with four sons and three daughters, all now deceased. When John Reed settled on this farm, it was then a wilderness, but he succeeded in placing about one hundred acres under cultivation. Here this worthy couple spent the remainder of their lives, the father dying March 18, 1873, aged seventy years, and the mother on March 26, 1885, aged eighty-two years. Mrs. Wilson is the fourth of their five children, all of whom were reared on this farm, and all are still living. Unto our subject and his wife was born one daughter, Elda Ann, who became the wife of Dr. Edward Leonard and died leaving an infant son, Eldon, who was born April 8, 1885, and who' has always made his home with his grandparents. They have a very pleasant home in the midst of one hundred and twenty-one acres of land, which was formerly the Reed homestead, and there Mr. Wilson's time is passed in general farming. @ Source: The History of Knox Co., Ohio, Its Past and Present - 1881 - Compiled by N. N. HILL, JR. Illustrated, Mt. Vernon, Ohio: A. A. Graham & Co.; Publishers. 1881. ~ Page 287 TJD