Robert Barnett Wilson has never been an office seeker, but at times has held honorable positions under both State and national law. In 1878 he was appointed to fill the unexpired term of the county judgeship and then elected for another term, refusing further preferment. In 1888 he, without his solicitation, was appointed by President Cleveland, Register of the United States land office at Dardanelle, which place he held until by a change of administration he was succeeded by a Republican. For fifteen years he was a member of the Russellville school board, acting as its president for the most part, succeeding Jacob L. Shinn. For many years he has been the local land agent of the Little Rock branch of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway; is the retained attorney of the Southern Anthracite Coal Company, the Onita Coal and Mining Company and the Peoples Exchange Bank, a leading financial institution in western Arkansas.

He is and always has been a Democrat, responding cheerfully to every call of his party, whether the demand was for work or for contributions; he has served as Chairman of the County Central Committee and has been a member of the State Central Committee.

For years he was a member of the Baptist church at Russellville, but at present affiliates with Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the church to which his wife has always belonged.

On November 21, 1877, he was married at Russellville, to Ann Mary Howell, Rev. W. J. Dodson, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, performing the ceremony. His wife was the daughter of Jesse C. and Adalissa C. (Hardaway) Howell, formerly of Hardin County, Kentucky.

It has been said that a good wife is the best fortune a man can have, and in this particular Mrs. Wilson has been a most exemplary woman. She is and always has been her husband's greatest helper. Beginning life poor, she practiced economy and industry as few women do, thus enabling her husband to gain a handsome competency. The children born of this marriage were: 1. Hurley Howell Wilson, born January 6, 1879; graduate of Russellville High School; graduated electrical engineer, University of Arkansas, class of 1901; now and for five years past in the employ of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, with headquarters at Altoona, Pennsylvania; superintended the electric lighting and power of the new union depot at Washington, D. C.; 2. Mary Wilson, born March 4, 1881; attended Maddox Seminary at Little Rock and Virginia Female Institute at Roanoke, Virginia; married Elbert H. Rank in in May, 1904, and has one child, Robert Wilson Rankin; 3. Frank Connyngham Wilson, born May 31, 1886; graduate of the Russellville High School, and of the Dental department of Vanderbilt University class of 1908; 4. Adalissa Wilson, born October 25, 1893, and 5, Robert Barnett Wilson, Jr., born April 23, 1897.

Judge Robert B. Wilson is a man of firm convictions coupled with a courtesy that wins him friends from all classes of men. No man in the country has achieved a more distinctive success in life than he, another proof of the power of the human will over external circumstances. Without the aid of influential friends, without that education which comes from the highest college forms and without any antecedent and inherited wealth, he has hammered out of adverse circumstances a position in life second to no one in the county. His word is as good as his bond and his social position that of the best of his fellows. From 'Wilsonia,' one of the finest houses, if not the finest house in Pope County, he dispenses an elegant hospitality and revives the prestige of the old Virginia name. In years to come men will point with as much pride to the Wilson House in Russellville as in centuries gone they pointed to the famous Bolling Hall on the historic James.

The above data is from Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas, Josiah Hazen Shinn, 1908.

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