Born: February 16, 1872

Died: May 27, 1952 at Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Married: Helen Lyman (died 1904); Hilda Emily Rea

Children: Richard and Caroline with Helen; four more children with Hilda, his second wife, 2 boys who died at birth and Kenneth and Christopher

Ellwood Wilson was the Saranac Lake village engineer c. 1900. He is reputed to have the first automobile in the village, a Stanley steamer. He was the secretary, treasurer and assistant manager of the Meadowbrook Farm. He was one of the first vestrymen of St. Luke's Church.

He hired architect Maurice Feustmann to design a home at 146 Park Avenue that resembles a Swiss chalet; Wilson and his wife had been in Davos, Switzerland, for two years prior to moving to Saranac Lake. Mrs. Wilson died in 1904 and Ellwood Wilson left the area, though he continued to own the home for many years. He owned several burial plots in Pine Ridge Cemetery and paid for maintenance of them for several years after he left the area.

He moved to Canada after his wife's death, and became a noted Canadian Forester, finally residing in Knowlton, Quebec.  He is credited with being one of the first to propose using amphibious aircraft to photograph and survey forests.

Catalog of Copyright Entries. Part 1. [A] Group 1. Books. New Series, Volume 3, No 18. October 31, 1907. By Library of Congress, Copyright Office, p. 654

SARANAC Lake, N. Y. Map of village of Saranac Lake, N. Y. Scale 50 ft to an Inch. 35 sheets, size 19 1/2 by 26 1/2 Inches. [14044]

Ellwood Wilson. Saranac Lake, N. Y. E 11532, Sept. 6, 1907; 2 blueprint c. Sept. 6, 1907.

Global Ecology: Towards a Science of the Biosphere,  edited by Mitchell B. Rambler

...The first major peacetime use of airplanes and photo-interpretation in forest-stand mapping was in Canada in 1919, when Ellwood Wilson (1920) used aerial photographs for forest stock-mapping. Half a million acres were photographed at a cost of 2 to 6 cents an acre (Howard, 1970)...

 

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