Little is known of William Wilson, except that he was a businessman of note in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in the early to mid-19th century and might have been the town's police officer. He was Dexter Marsh's supervisor and visited Marsh's "cabinet of curiosities", as evidenced by his signature in the visitor's book. His name is known at all only because Edward Hitchcock listed him among the possible claimants to the discovery of fossil footprints in his feud with James Deane, also of Greenfield.