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Charles William Wilson was a Royal Engineer and prominent official of the Ordnance Survey. He was born in Liverpool, schooled partly in Bonn, and offered a rare competitive commission as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1855. He began his cartographic career by serving as the transport officer and secretary of the commission sent to discern the boundary between Canada and the United States along the 49th parallel. Four years later, in 1862, he returned to England.
In 1864, as a captain, Wilson volunteered to lead the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, the first survey conducted by the Ordnance Survey outside of the UK. His detailed maps and report helped to inspire the creation of the Palestine Exploration Fund, which named Wilson its first director. He returned to Palestine at the end of 1865 to survey the area from Beirut to Damascus to Hebron. Wilson continued to serve the Fund for the rest of his life, becoming chairman in 1901.
Next, Wilson was placed in charge of the Ordnance Survey in Scotland, with a stint on the Parliamentary Boundary Commission in the Midlands. In 1868, he returned to the Middle East to survey Palestine. Considered an industrious problem-solver, Wilson was placed in charge of the bedraggled topographical and statistical department of the War Office in 1869; he streamlined and improved the office over the course of the next several years. During this time, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (1869) and the Royal Society (1874).
1875 found him in Afghanistan, completing a map for the India Office. In 1876, he was named director of the Ordnance Survey in Ireland. He took breaks from this appointment, however, to serve as a British commissioner on the international committee to demarcate a new border in Serbia and to serve as the consul-general in Anatolia. After some time in Bulgaria, he went to Egypt as a military attaché. Next, he was attached to the Gordon relief expedition in Sudan in 1884; he was also embroiled in the scandal that followed its failure.
In 1885, he finally returned to the Ordnance Survey in Ireland. Less than a year passed before he was promoted to director-general of the Ordnance Survey of the United Kingdom. In 1894 he received the rank of major-general and served, from 1894-8, as the director-general of military education at the War Office. In his final years he revisited Palestine. He died in Tunbridge Wells, Kent in 1905.
In addition to his maps, Wilson is known for his travel accounts and handbooks from his time in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Anatolia, and Sudan.
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