JESSE EVERETT WILSON, Indiana attorney, with offices in 
the First Trust Building at Hammond, was born in Clay 
Township, Owen County, this state, October 4, 1867. This 
branch of the Wilson family came to Indiana from North 
Carolina. His grandfather, James H. Wilson, was one of 
the first pioneer settlers of Clay Township, Owen County, 
where he took up a tract of Government land as early as 
1833. He married a Miss Campbell, and both of them are 
buried in Owen County. The father of James H. Wilson was 
Samuel Wilson, a North Carolina soldier in the War of 
the Revolution. John Wesley Wilson, father of the 
Hammond 
attorney, was born in North Carolina and was eight years 
of age when the family moved to Indiana. He spent all 
his active life as a farmer, was a good citizen and a 
faithful member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He 
died in 1892 and is buried at Heading’s Chapel in Clay 
Township. He married Piety J. Maners, who is now 
ninety-three years of age and lives in Indianapolis. 
She was reared and educated in Clay Township and is a 
Methodist. These parents had a family of eleven children, 
eight sons and three daughters: John F., deceased; James 
B., an attorney at Bloomington, Indiana; Mary, deceased; 
Frank A., of Greencastle, Indiana; Charles E., of 
Indianapolis; Jesse E.; Mrs. Emma Ent, of Indianapolis;
William H., of New York; Dr. Max 
D., of Chicago; Luther A., deceased; and Mrs. Effie 
Hamilton, of North Carolina. Jesse Everett Wilson was 
educated in public schools in his native county, 
graduated from high school at Spencer, and in 1895 
completed his academic and legal education in Indiana 
University. He was admitted to the bar the same year, 
and has had over thirty- five years of experience as a 
professional man. For ten years he practiced at 
Rensselaer, and while there was elected a member of the 
House of Representatives from Jasper and Lake counties, 
serving in the sessions of 1903 and 1905. President 
Roosevelt appointed Mr. Wilson in 1905 an assistant 
secretary of the interior, and he was at Washington 
with that department during the remainder of the 
Roosevelt administration and under President Taft until 
March, 1911. After this official service Mr. Wilson 
returned to Indiana and located at Hammond, where for 
twenty years he has carried on a successful general 
practice. During the World war he was president of the 
Hammond Chamber of Commerce and had a prominent part in 
directing the local war program. He has been president 
of the Hammond Chapter, American Red Cross, since 1918.
 He is a member of the County, District and Indiana 
State Bar Associations, a Royal Arch Mason, member of 
the Knights of Pythias, B. P. 0. Elks, Kiwanis Club, 
Woodmar Country Club, of which he is president, and is 
a trustee of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of 
Hammond and a member of the Phi Gamma Delta college 
fraternity. Mr. Wilson married at Rensselaer, Indiana, 
November 14, 1904, Miss Gail Wasson, daughter of John M. 
and Martha J. (Wood) Wasson. Her father was a Union 
soldier in the Civil war and had the interesting 
experience of getting out through a tunnel to escape 
from Libby Prison, being with Colonel Strait in this 
hazardous enterprise. The attempt was frustrated and 
the prisoners were recaptured, and later were 
transferred to the Confederate prison at Salisbury, 
North Carolina, where he remained until the end of the 
war. He served with the rank of captain. Captain Wasson 
after the war for many years was a banker and farmer 
in Jasper County. He died in 1912 and 
is buried at Rensselaer. His widow still lives at the 
old homestead, now eighty-six years of age. Mrs. Wilson 
attended school in Jasper County and completed her 
education in Northwestern University. She is a member 
of the Kappa Alpha Theta fraternity, belongs to the 
Woman’s Club and the Methodist Episcopal Church. Mr. and 
Mrs. Wilson have four children: Wasson J., Jane, Gail 
and Mary. Wasson J. graduated from the Hammond High 
School, from Indiana University with the class of 1926 
and received his law degree at the University of Chicago 
in 1929. He is a member of Phi Gamnla Delta fraternity 
and Phi Delta Phi law fraternity. He is a prominent 
young attorney, an associate of his father in practice 
in Hammond. The daughter Jane was educated in the La 
Salle School near Boston and in Indiana University, and 
is now the wife of Fred Beckman, a lumberman at Hammond, 
Indiana. They have one child, Gail. Mr. And Mrs. 
Wilson’s third child, Gail, graduated from the Hammond 
High School, attended Northwestern University and Gulf 
Park School at Biloxi, Mississippi, and the University 
of Wisconsin. She is a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta 
fraternity. The youngest of the family, Mary, is a 
junior high school girl at Hammond. Mr. Wilson has had 
a most successful career as a lawyer and as a citizen. 
He is a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the 
United States. While he was in Washington, President 
Roosevelt appointed him chairman of the United States 
Government board for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, 
held in Seattle in 1909.