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.^[1]

Wilson was born in Habersham County, Georgia in about 1829, to William Wilson (d. 1849), a Scottish tanner and shoemaker, and Rachel Wilson (1797–1870).^[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.^[2] After saving his money, he started a "general merchandise" business with W. R. High, taking his business on the road. He would buy items in Atlanta and then sell them or trade them for cotton. During this period, he met the Orme brothers^{[citation needed]}, who both worked for the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad.^[2]

After heading towards Knoxville, Tennessee, and finding himself exhausted in Loudon, Tennessee, he slept on the doorstep of the town's mercantile store, owned by Ebenezer Johnston. Johnston, a South Carolina native, owned 712 acres of farmland, a large manor house and slave quarters. After Johnston saw Wilson's work, he agreed allow Wilson to marry his daughter in 1852 and to finance business ventures for Wilson. They stayed in Loudon until late 1860, when he moved his growing family to Nashville, Tennessee.^[2]

On December 23, 1852, he married Melissa Clementine Johnston (1831–1908), the eldest daughter of Ebenezer Johnston.^[4][8] Together, they were the parents of five children. Through his wife's connections, she was able to enter and become intimate with "old New York society". Because of their children's advantageous marriages, the Wilsons were known in New York and Newport society as the "marrying Wilsons."^[9]

• Mary Rita "May" Wilson (1855–1929), who married Ogden Goelet (1851–1897) in 1878^[10]
• Marshall Orme Wilson (1860–1926), who married Caroline Schermerhorn "Carrie" Astor (1861–1948), daughter of William Backhouse Astor Jr. and Caroline Webster Schermerhorn, and the sister of Colonel John Jacob Astor IV, the richest passenger on the RMS Titanic
• Leila "Belle" Wilson (1864–1923), who married Sir Michael Henry Herbert (1857–1903) in 1888, the British ambassador to the United States during Theodore Roosevelt's administration, and the brother of the 13th and 14th Earls of Pembroke^[11]
• Richard Thornton Wilson Jr. (1866–1929), who married Marion Steedman Mason in 1902,^[12] granddaughter of Rear Admiral Charles Steedman of Charleston, South Carolina, and great-granddaughter of U.S. Senator of New Hampshire, Jeremiah Mason.^[13]
• Grace Graham Wilson (1870–1953), who married Cornelius Vanderbilt III (1873–1942) in 1896,^[14] despite his father's wishes.^[15] Vanderbilt's sister, Gertrude, was married to Harry Payne Whitney.

Wilson was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Union Club, Manhattan Club, Metropolitan Club, and Downtown Club, the Southern Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History.

Wilson died on November 26, 1910, aged 80, at his residence, 511 Fifth Avenue, in New York City.^[1][2] His estate totaled $16,072,470 at his death, of which $2,216,083 was real estate. His Newport residence, 97 Narragansett Avenue, was not valued in the appraisal.^[16] According to the terms of his will, his estate was divided among his children and grandchildren, with no bequests made to charity.^[16]