Lawrence D. Wilson
Lawrence D. Wilson, head of the Wilson Engineering and Contracting Company of the city of Xenia. was born in that city and has lived there practically all his life, though some years were spent in the East, where for some time he was engaged in engineering work before entering into business on his own behalf in Xenia. He was born on February 7, 1882, son of Matthew D. and Frances (Morris) Wilson, the latter of whom also was born in this county and both of whom are still living at Xenia.
Matthew D. Wilson is a Pennsylvanian by birth, but has been a resident of Ohio since the days of his early childhood, his parents having moved from Pennsylvania to Zanesville, this state, when he was but a child. When he was fifteen years of age his parents moved from Zanesville to Xenia and he completed his schooling in the schools of the latter citv. After his marriage he became engaged in the grocery business in Xenia, but presently gave up that business and became a traveling salesman, a vocation he since has followed, his activities in that connection having covered a period of more than thirty-five years. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson have two children, the subject of this sketch having a sister, Gertrude, who married Waldo H. Sawin and is now living in New York City.
Lawrence D. Wilson was reared at Xenia, receiving his schooling in the schools of that city, and after three years of work in the high school became engaged in the T. L. Morris & Company warehouse, later becommg identified with that concern. It was while thus engaged that Mr. Wilson became interested in civil engineering and general construction work and he presently entered upon the practical phase of engineering, traveling throughout the East as a member of the staff of the Wooster Construction Company, engaged in railway work and other lines of construction work. While thus engaged he came home on a vacation and for a year thereafter was connected with the engineering work of street construction in Xenia, afterward returning East as a member of the engineering staff of J. G. White & Company of New York City, and for three years was thus connected, his principal work being in the line of railway construction. He then returned to Xenia and while "resting up" drafted a new map of the city of Xenia. While home on that visit Mr. Wilson determined to engage in business on his own account in Xenia and with that end in view opened an office for general engineering and construction work, under the firm name of Wilson & Schlesinger. That was in 1908. In that same year he was awarded the contract for surveying the line of the projected Cincinnati, Wilmington & Xenia Traction Railway and carried the same through. At the end of the year Mr. Wilson bought the Schlesinger interest in the concern of which he was the head and not long afterward formed a new connection, for a year thereafter doing business under the firm name of Wilson & Dean. This firm name presently was changed to that of the L. D. Wilson Company and not long afterward was incorporated as the Wilson Engineering and Contracting Company, which company is now rated as a seventy-five-thousand-dollar concern. Before he was twenty-one years of age Mr. Wilson had successfully directed the construction of the Chambersburg & Gettysburg Electric Railway line. Fraternally, he is affiliated with the local lodges of the Free and Accepted Masons and of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
From 20th Century History of Delaware County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Edited and compiled by James R. Lytle, Delaware, Ohio, Biographical Publishing Co., Chicago, 1908