Benjamin Franklin Wilson was the son of George Wilson of Nottingham, England, and Fanny Pearson Wilson of Cumberland, England. His parents moved to America in the 1850s, and he was born in Belmont, Ontario, November 7, 1859.
B.F. Wilson typifies the Wisconsin entrepreneur of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After starting work as office boy in the Ruggles Lumber Co., Manistee, Michigan, he was advanced to head bookkeeper there, but in 1881 took a bookkeeping position with the Bradley Brothers Co. in Milwaukee. In time he returned to Manistee to a better position, and in 1892 came back to Milwaukee as director, secretary, and treasurer of the Bradley Brothers Land, Log, and Lumber Co. In 1897 Wilson and H.E. Salsich formed their own lumber company at Star Lake, Wisconsin. This company was dissolved in 1907.
In 1910 Wilson established the Wilson Mercantile Company in Wausau. The firm (capitalized with 75,000 dollars by twelve stockholders) prospered, and, in time, opened a branch in Rhinelander. Wilson Mercantile dealt in wholesale groceries and sundries. The Company continued in business as a Wisconsin corporation until 1948 when it was dissolved by common consent of the stockholders. Wilson's son, Perry M. Wilson, had become president of the company after his father's death in 1934. Shortly after the company's dissolution it was succeeded by the Valley Queen Cooperative Association, a new corporation with many of the same stockholders and officers.
Wilson was a director of several Wausau businesses including Employers' Mutual Liability Insurance Co., Marathon Paper Mills Co., Wisconsin Valley Electric Co., Marathon County Bank of Wausau, and the Record-Herald Newspaper Company. He owned and operated a 240-acre farm on which he bred and raised Guernsey cattle. A sportsman, he was also a founding partner of the Deerfoot Hunting Lodge on Star Lake.
Wilson married Della M. Russell of Manistee, Michigan, in 1882. They had five children, George, Perry, Edgar, Marion, and Florence. His older brother, John A. Wilson, was a prominent lumberman of Portland, Oregon. Benjamin Franklin Wilson died on June 22, 1934.
