he was elected lieutenant-colonel, and at twenty-six was commissioned as
colonel of the Twelfth Regiment.

Soon after his removal to Boston he joined the Ancient and Honorable
Artillery Company. In 1856, he was chosen commander of the corps, being
the one hundred and fifty-fifth in command. He had four times previously
declined nominations. He entered into correspondence with Prince Albert,
commander of the Royal Artillery Company of London, founded in 1537, of
which this corps, chartered in 1638, is the only offspring. This
correspondence established a friendly intercourse between the two
companies. In June, 1857, Prince Albert was chosen a special honorary
member of our company, and twenty-one years later, in 1878, Colonel
Wilder, who then celebrated the fiftieth or golden anniversary of his
own membership, nominated the Prince of Wales, the present commander of
the London company, as an honorary member. Both were commanders of the
Honorable Artillery Company of London when chosen. The late elegantly
illustrated history of the London company contains a portrait of Colonel
Wilder as he appeared in full uniform on that occasion.

In 1839, he was induced to serve for a single term in the Massachusetts
Legislature, as a representative for the town of Dorchester. In 1849, he
was elected a member of Governor Briggs's Council, and the year
following a member of the senate and its president, and he is the the
oldest ex-president of the senate living. In 1860, he was the member for
New England of the national committee of the "Constitutional Union
Party," and attended, as chairman of the Massachusetts delegation, the
national convention in Baltimore, where John Bell and Edward Everett
were nominated for President and Vice-President of the United States.

He was initiated in Charity Lodge, No. 18, in Troy, New Hampshire, at