Robert E. Lee Wilson

Robert Edward Lee Wilson (March 5, 1865 – September 27, 1933) was the creator and owner of Lee Wilson and Company, a group of large cotton plantations in Mississippi County, Arkansas. Acquiring much of his father's former swamplands, Wilson formed a logging and farming business that would become one of the largest and most successful in the United States.

Personal History Wilson was born to Josiah Wilson and Martha Parsons Wilson on a rural plantation in Mississippi County in 1865. Robert's father died without a proper will, so his heirs fought over estate after Josiah Wilson's death in 1870. Wilson went to court in 1878 to declare himself "emancipated" at the age of 17 so as to be able to lay a proper legal claim to a part of his father's estate.

Besides his agricultural holdings, in 1908, Wilson founded a bank in Mississippi County. This bank helped his companies to weather the worst of the Great Depression. A period company brochure claims the Wilson & Company grounds to be the world's largest plantation.

A proponent of President Roosevelt's Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Wilson used his political connections to secure federal help for his cotton business during the Great Depression. In 1935, Lee Wilson & Company was the single largest recipient of Agricultural Adjustment Administration funds of any farming company or operation in America.