Emilio’s parents, Marie Victorine and John Natheniel Molineaux met in San Pedro de Marcoris, where Marie was a house servant and John was a fisherman from Tortola. Emilio (born 1911) and his brothers, who were also brought to their mother’s home island at a young age, attended the “openbare” or public school in Little Bay. Little Bay district extended from Fort Amsterdam peninsula to the present-day roundabout where the Bush Road. L.B. Scott Road, and Brouwers Road meet.
Emilio Wilson's History
After 1954, Emilio worked in Town as a salesman in the grocery store of L.C. van Romondt. The shop, bought later by Louis Constant Fleming, Sr., was located on the Ruyter Plein, now the Cyrus Wathey Square. Emilio worked for leading businessmen Charles T. Vlaun and Chester Wathey. He worked as a cashier at Utilities, the Watheys’ popular general goods store, when it was located in Netherwood house on Frontstreet.
From August 1954 to 1995, Emilio lived in the Industry estate house or mansion in which John Philips lived in the 1740s. Philips, for whom the city of Philipsburg is named, was a vice commander of St. Maarten in the mid-1700s. When Hurricane Luis destroyed Emilio’s mansion on September 5, 1995, he moved to the former sugarcane boiling house, the building where his mother had been taught to read and write.
Emilio loved his island and was an outspoken person, especially against the government’s immigration policy and destruction of the natural environment. He was a self-made man and loved to read newspapers and magazines from St. Maarten and every parts of the world.
Emilio Wilson often spoke to members of the Emilio Wilson Historical and Cultural Foundation board about his fear that after he died, the beautiful, green hill and hillsides of his property would be destroyed. In 2001, Emilio Wilson signed a long-lease agreement, granting the Emilio Wilson Historical and Cultural Foundation the right to develop the part of his property called the “Doctor’s yard,” into a historical. cultural, educational. and recreational park. In July 2002, a week after the official opening of the Emilio Wilson Park, the generous landowner and patron of the arts died at the age of ninety.