SILAS WILSON
Silas Wilson, in company with S. W. Wilson, established the nursery at Grove City, in 1871, the name of the firm being Wilson and Wilson. In 1877 they dissolved partnership, Silas taking the wholesale, and S. W. Wilson the retail department. Mr. Wilson has eighty acres of nursery stock on section 11, and some lots of seven acres in Grove City. He has, altogether, one hundred and twenty acres in trees. He has a grape nursery of seventy acres, the largest one in the United States. His trade extends into every State and territory in the Union. He does exclusively a wholesale business, and employs from twenty-five to thirty men constantly. He grew and shipped, last year, (1883), eight hundred thousand grapevines. He grows a general variety of seedlings, but makes a specialty of grapevines and apple seedlings. Mr. Wilson was born in Marshall county, West Virginia, May 16, 1846, and is a son of Samuel and Charlotte (McIntyre) Wilson. He obtained his education in his native county, and in Washington county, Iowa, where he went in 1865. He went from Washington county to Madison county, and commenced the nursery business near Winterset. He removed to this county, as before stated, in 1871. He was married in September, 1815, to Edna Aylesworth, a native of Lake county, Illinois. He is a leader in the Republican party, and is at present chairman of the county central committee.
Contributed by Lisa Varnes-Rex from "History of Cass County, Iowa. Together With Sketches of its Towns, Villages and Townships, Educational, Civil, Military and Political History: Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Old Settlers and Representative Citizens." Springfield, Ill.: Continental Historical Company, 1884, pp. 844-845.
