Founded in 1910 by William Green, whose family had settled in South Texas more than a century earlier, Wilson Mercantile Company grew from a townsite that was part of four leagues of Wilson County school lands bought in 1906 by Green and Associates. After buying out his associates, Green and Lonnie Lumsden acquired more than 50 sections of the old Dixie Ranch in the north part of Lynn County, with their ranching headquarters a mile east of here. Green introduced farming on the school lands and brought in settlers, many from his home county of Lavaca, some as purchasers and some as tenants. The community took the name Wilson from the original tract, and indirectly from Rev. J. C. Wilson, the state senator for whom Wilson County was named. After Green influenced the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway to place its line here, the town was founded in 1911. Green's original frame mercantile store, which became the nucleus of the town, was replaced in 1917 by this building. In 1963, Mrs. William Dickson Green, daughter-in-law of the founder, restored Wilson Mercantile, making the building a repository for items authentic to the period when the Greens came to Texas and to the era when the town of Wilson was established and the store was founded.