William Sydney Wilson

William S. Wilson was a Confederate officer and politician on the state level from Mississippi.

Born in Snow Hill, Maryland on November 7, 1816, Wilson graduated from Princeton in 1835 and became a lawyer in Port Gibson (Claiborne County) Mississippi. His father, a native of Snow Hill named Ephraim King Wilson Sr., was also a lawyer and member of the US Congress. He died when William was 18 years old. The family was Presbyterian.

Wilson, like his father, was a Democrat. He was elected to the Mississippi legislature in 1858 and again in 1860. He served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1860 and later served briefly in the Provisional Confederate Congress, resigning from that body on April 29, 1861.

Wilson enlisted as captain of F Company of the 2d Mississippi Battalion. The unit later changed its designation to the 48th Mississippi Infantry. He became major on November 2, 1861 and then lieutenant colonel on June 30, 1862. Wilson was mortally wounded at Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862. He died on November 3, 1862. His body was returned to the family plot and laid to rest in the Makemie Presbyterian Churchyard in Snow Hill, Maryland.

William Wilson also had a younger brother, Ephraim King Wilson Jr., who was a Democratic politican in Maryland. After the War, the brother became a United States senator. The brother also was the adoptive father of John Walter Smith, also a US Senator and Governor of Maryland.