Wilson was born on February 28, 1822 in
Steubenville, Ohio, the son of Mary Anne (Adams) and
James Wilson, who were Protestant immigrants from
Strabane,
County Tyrone,
Ireland (today in Northern Ireland). He graduated from Jefferson College (now
Washington & Jefferson College) in
Canonsburg, Pennsylvania in 1844. He taught literature at Washington & Jefferson. Wilson married Jessie Woodrow and was later employed as a professor at
Hampden–Sydney College. He left the school in 1856, just before the birth of his son,
Thomas Woodrow Wilson, in
Staunton, Virginia, which occurred on December 28. There he became the pastor of Staunton's Presbyterian Church, which he held from 1855 to 1857. In late 1857 he moved his family to
Augusta, Georgia, where he continued to practice as a Presbyterian pastor. Joseph and Jessie Wilson had moved to the South in 1851 and came to fully identify with it, moving from Virginia deeper into the region as Wilson was called to be a minister in Georgia and South Carolina. Joseph Wilson owned slaves, defended slavery, and also set up a Sunday school for his slaves. Wilson and his wife identified with the
Confederacy during the American Civil War; they cared for wounded soldiers at their church, and Wilson briefly served as a chaplain to the
Confederate States Army. In 1861 Wilson was one of the founders of the Southern
Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) after it split from the northern Presbyterians. He served as the first permanent clerk of the PCUS General Assembly, was Stated Clerk for more than three decades from 1865 to 1898, and was Moderator of the PCUS General Assembly in 1879. He served as minister of the
First Presbyterian Church in
Augusta, Georgia until 1870. Wilson became a professor at
Columbia Theological Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1870. He moved to the pastorate at the First Presbyterian Church,
Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1874. During his time in Wilmington, he presided over many events, including the payment of the local church's debts, the abolition of pew rents, and the inauguration of subscription and weekly contributions. In 1885 he became a professor of theology at
Rhodes College, which was then known as Southwestern Presbyterian University, in
Clarksville, Tennessee. He died in
Princeton, New Jersey, on January 21, 1903 at the age of eighty. ==Children==