Henry J. Wilson (U.S. Army officer)
American colonel (1793-1872)
Henry J. Wilson (born 1793 – died 1872) was a U.S. Army officer who served in five wars and countless conflicts.
Background and career
He was born in 1793 in Philadelphia and was commissioned an ensign in the 28th U.S. Infantry in 1813. He was promoted to second lieutenant in 1814. In 1815, he was recommissioned and was sent with General Andrew Jackson to Florida to serve during the First Seminole War. While in service there, he was promoted to captain and made the rear adjutant of Jackson's Army. In Pensacola, he met his future wife, Mary Henrietta Innerarity, daughter of John Innerarity, scion of the Forbes & Co. Indian trading firm.
He served in various posts in Baton Rouge, Minnesota, and Michigan and later served in the Second Seminole War, at one time as military governor of the western Florida military district, after being promoted to brevet major and then major. He was detached from duty in April 1837 to mediate a conflict at Mobile Point, Alabama, over the proper delivery of contracted beef for the Creek Indians who were being rounded up and transported to their new lands in the West. In 1838, he headed up the final preparations for the migration of the Cherokee Indians from western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, the Trail of Tears.
“Henry J. Wilson (U.S. Army officer)” enters the record as american colonel (1793-1872). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Henry, Wilson and Army can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5723743. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1793, 1872, 1813 and 1814.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry J. Wilson (U.S. Army officer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.