This one-and-a-half-storey clapboard house was built by John Wilson in 1816. It was part of the rebuilding that took place here following the burning of Niagara in December 1813. Wilson was a successful farmer and merchant. He was also the owner of the Exchange Hotel, formerly on Queen Street, which was where the Upper Canada Law Society was first formed.

John G. Williams was a local artist who completed many pencil and charcoal sketches of scenes in St. Catharines and Niagara-on-the-Lake. Born in Brighton, England, as a young man he worked as a photographer and a librarian. In 1911, he came to Canada, working as a photographer during the Welland Canal construction. In 1917, when work on the canal was halted due to the Great War, he began a job as a tax collector for the city of St. Catharines, a position he held until retiring in 1949. The sketches in the collection of the Niagara Historical Museum we completed in the 1950s. John G. Williams died in 1960.