Samuel Franklin Wilson

Samuel Franklin Wilson was born in April 1845 in Sumner County, Tennessee.[1] He was of English descent.[1] During paternal great-great-uncle, Zachary Wilson, was a signatory of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.[1] His father was Samuel Wilson and his mother, Nancy Moore.[1] He had seven siblings.[1]

During the American Civil War of 1861–1865, he served under Colonel William B. Bate and General Edmund Kirby Smith in the Confederate States Army.[1] He lost an arm at the Battle of Chickamauga, and he was amputated.[1]

After the war, Wilson graduated from the University of Georgia in 1868.[1] He received a law degree from Cumberland University.[1]

Wilson practised the law in Gallatin, Tennessee.[1]

Wilson was a member of the Democratic Party.[2] He served in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1877 to 1879, sitting on the judiciary committee.[1] He was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1879, and served as the chairman of its judiciary committee.[1] He was elected by the "low taxers" to represent Tennessee at the 1880 Democratic National Convention, but he lost to Alvin Hawkins.[2]

Wilson was appointed as a United States Marshal from 1885 to 1889, under President Grover Cleveland.[2] He served as a Judge on the Tennessee Court of Chancery Appeals from 1895 to 1901.[2]

Wilson married Mary Lytton Bostick.[1] They had two sons and three daughters.[1] He died in 1923.