Wilson, ALEXANDER, American ornithologist, was born at Paisley, Scotland, July 6, 1766. He was the son of a weaver, and, though at first intended for the church, he was apprenticed in 1779 to the weaving-trade. Meanwhile he indulged his fondness for writing verses, for books and nature. He gratified a roving disposition by mounting a pedlar's pack for about three years, and published a volume of poems in 1790. The piece by which he is best remembered is a droll poem in the Scottish dialect, styled Watty and Meg, published as a chap-book in 1792, and ascribed by some to Burns. He was prosecuted for a lampoon upon a master weaver during a trade dispute, and afterwards sailed from Belfast for America, and landed at Newcastle, Delaware, July 14, 1794, with a few borrowed shillings in his pocket, and no acquaintances. He got work with a copperplate-printer in Philadelphia, then with a weaver; travelled as a pedlar in New Jersey, where the brilliant plumage of the birds attracted his attention; was engaged as a school-teacher in Pennsylvania, and then walked 800 miles to visit a nephew in New York. Whilst he was teaching a school once more near Philadelphia, William Bartram, who was well acquainted with birds, stimulated and encouraged him in his studies of nature, and Alexander Lawson gave him lessons in drawing, colouring, and etching. His excellence at drawing birds strengthened his resolution to make a collection of all the birds that were to be found in America. In October 1804 he set out on his first excursion, in which he travelled to Niagara Falls, and wrote The Foresters, a Poem, and ere his return had walked 1260 miles. In 1806 he was employed on the American edition of Rees's Cyclopædia. He soon prevailed upon the publisher, Bradford, to undertake an American Ornithology, and in September 1808 he brought out the first volume, but in a style too costly for the tastes and fortunes of the period. The second volume was brought out in 1810. In 1811 he made a canoe voyage down the Ohio for 720 miles, and travelled overland through the Lower Mississippi Valley, from Nashville to New Orleans, collecting specimens for his third volume. His seventh volume appeared in 1813. In his eager pursuit of a rare species of bird, of which he had long wanted a specimen, he swam across a river, and caught a cold, which ended in his death, at Philadelphia, August 23, 1813, when he had nearly completed his work. The eighth and ninth volumes were published after his death, with memoir by Ord, his assistant. The work was continued by Charles Lucien Bonaparte, in 4 vols. (1828-33); and an edition by Sir W. Jardine (3 vols. 1832) has been more than once reprinted. Wilson was the first to study American birds in their native haunts, and his unrivalled descriptions are remarkable for fidelity and truth. A monument was erected to his memory in Paisley Abbey church-yard in 1874.
There are Lives by Crichton (1816), Ord (1828), Sir William Jardine (1829), Hetherington (1831), Jared Sparks (1851), Brightwell (1861), and A. P. Paton (1863), and a Sketch prefixed to Grosart's edition of his Poems and Miscellaneous Prose (2 vols. 1876).