Richard Thornton Wilson (c. 1829 – November 26, 1910) was a multimillionaire American investment banker known for being the father of five children who all married into prominent families during the Gilded Age of New York.

[2] After the death of his father in 1849, he needed to find employment, so he went to Dalton, Georgia and began working as a clerk in a store owned by Levi Brotherton, a Methodist clergyman and missionary.

During this period, he met the Orme brothers[citation needed], who both worked for the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad.

Johnston, a South Carolina native, owned 712 acres of farmland, a large manor house and slave quarters.

[2] During the American Civil War, the family moved to Macon, Georgia and Wilson served on the staff of Lucius B. Northrop, the Commissary-General of the Confederate States of America.

Later Wilson was appointed Commissary General by Jefferson Davis, and in this capacity, he was sent to London by the Confederate Government to dispose of the cotton crop.