Wilson Augustus McGinnis

Wilson Augustus McGinnis, 1850-1899
Architect
 
Initially buried in AOUW Cemetery; later moved to Greenwood

(Generic image created with Bing AI)

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​Wilson Augustus McGinnis was born in Dyer County, Tennessee, in February, 1850. He was the youngest of ten children belonging to John S. McGinnis and his wife, Martha Mathis (or Matthews?). 
 
By 1884, Wilson was in Phillips County, Arkansas, where he married Letitia “Lula” Vaughan on February 15th. Their first child, Neil Weston McGinnis, was born about a year later across the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tennessee. Eula, their second child, was born in August 1886 in Texas. By July 20, 1888, the McGinnises was in Phoenix, Arizona, where four more children were born to them.
 
Wilson McGinnis was a very busy architect, surveyor and civil engineer in Phoenix and central-northern Arizona. He formed a partnership with another architect, Fred Heinlein, and, in 1890, they were the architects for the territorial insane asylum. He served as Phoenix’s city engineer until February 1893, when he resigned over a disagreement with the City Council.

McGinnis owned an almond orchard in south Phoenix. In July 1895, the trees were bearing nuts. He was also interested in growing ramie, a natural fiber.

On June 27, 1896, Fred Heinlein, the architect originally selected for the Normal School in Tempe, was discharged and the position given to McGinnis. A year later, he received a contract to examine the unfinished boys’ reform school in Flagstaff and design plans to convert it into an insane asylum. However, the contract was cancelled in August, 1897.

W. A. McGinnis was the Maricopa County surveyor until he suffered a breakdown in 1898. In June, he was remanded to the asylum he had helped design. His wife took him back to Tennessee in July in hopes that a change of scenery would benefit him, but to no avail.

McGinnis’s illness left two of his projects unfinished. Evidently the Board of Control decided that one insane asylum was enough for the Territory. The reform school in Flagstaff was converted instead into Northern Arizona University. Architect James Miller Creighton stepped in to finish Old Main at what is now ASU.

McGinnis died on August 2, 1899. He was buried initially in the AOUW cemetery, Block 18, Lot 3. His remains and those of his little daughter Etta were later moved to the newly-opened Greenwood Cemetery.
 
McGinnis had an AOUW life insurance policy which paid $2,000 on his demise. The money was used to pay off the mortgage on his almond orchard in the expectation that it would provide an income for his family.
 
© 2024 by Tim Kovacs and Donna L. Carr. Last revised 14 August 2025.

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