WILSON, ALEXANDER (1766-1813), American orni thologist and poet, was born in Paisley, Scotland, July 6, 1766. At 13 he was apprenticed to a weaver that he might follow his father's trade, but of ter a few years rebelled and became a pedlar. Tramping up and down Scotland, he composed numerous dialect poems treating his lot or depicting with broad humour and the pathos born of poverty the life of the folk. The most famous of these productions, W atty and Meg, published as a penny chap book, is said to have sold to the number of 1 oo,000 copies within a few weeks and to have been praised by Burns. In the labour troubles which arose at this time Wilson's sympathies were natur ally with the oppressed weavers. He published a number of lam poons in verse, for which he was convicted of libel and com pelled to burn his satires at the town cross, and later, for lack of money for a fine, he was imprisoned. It is small wonder then that with his nephew, William Duncan, he emigrated to America as a deck passenger, landing with only a gun and the clothes on his back. His years of poverty and hardship were not over, but a turning point came when as a village schoolmaster in Philadel phia he met William Bartram, the naturalist, who encouraged him in his drawing and collecting "of all the birds in this part of North America." In 1806 he obtained the assistant-editorship of the
American edition of Ree's Encyclopaedia, and thus acquired more means and leisure for his great work, American Ornithology, the first volume of which appeared in the autumn of 1808, after which he spent the winter in a journey "in search of birds and subscribers." By the spring of 1813 seven volumes had appeared. He succumbed to dysentery at Philadelphia Aug. 23, 1813.
Wilson's Poems and Literary Prose were edited with a memoir by the Rev. A. B. Grosart in 1876, a statue being erected to Wilson in Paisley the same year. The eighth and ninth volumes of the American Ornithology were edited after his decease by his friend George Ord, who published an early Sketch of the Life of Alexander Wilson, and the work was continued by Lucien Bonaparte. The complete Orni thology has been several times republished.