Joseph Wyatt Wilson was born on April 1, 1806, in Wilkes County, Georgia. He married Amanda Clayton on October 3, 1838, and they had at least eleven children: Eliza, born around 1839; Clayton, born around 1841; Julia, born around 1841; Wyatt, born around 1843; Mary, born around 1845; Amanda, born around 1847; Augusta, born around 1849; Savannah, born around 1852; William, born around 1854; Lucy, born around 1855; and Laurance, born around 1859. They moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in the late 1830s, and he worked as a gardener. By 1850, he owned $5,000 of real estate.

 

A decade later, the family owned $16,000 of real estate and $500 of personal property. By 1870, he had “no active business,” and he owned $20,000 of real estate and $1,500 of personal property. In the early 1870s, a local writer described him as an “old and highly respected citizen…and a well known floriculturist and horticulturist.” He died of rheumatism in Montgomery on August 29, 1873.

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