WHEELER, J. H.

WHEELER

Posted By: Jennifer Gunderson (email)
Date: 3/13/2021 at 22:51:48

That faithful domestic animal, the mule, is said to be without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity. In one respect, at least, I differ from the mule, for I possess pride of ancestry; in another respect however, I fear I bear him some resemblance, for, being a bachelor of advanced age, I have little hope of posterity. Through my paternal grandmother, Sally Fuller, born in 1785, I claim descent from the Pilgrim Fathers who came over in the Mayflower and landed on Plymouth Rock in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty.

Through my paternal grandfather, Weston Wheeler, born in 1783, I claim descent from Puritan forbears who came from the shores of the old to those of the New England during the first half of the first century of its settlement. Tradition hath it that the Wheeler’s were of good fighting stock and did their share in the interminable wars in which the Colonies were engaged during the century and a half that intervened between the first settlement of New England and the Revolution.

At Bunker Hill my paternal great-grandfather, Josiah Wheeler, then only twenty years old, under Colonel John Stark, helped construct the breastwork of rails and new mown grass and from behind that improvised and frail defense gave the British regulars ball for ball until his ammunition gave out. He fought at White Plains, at Princeton and Trenton and at Bennington and Saratoga. His last exploit was at the very close of the war and after he had retired from the service, at the burning of Royalton. His time having expired, Josiah Wheeler had retired from the service in 1779 and married Miss Nancy Howe. In 1782, or thereabouts, he had taken his wife and child, a team of horses and his earthly possessions and settled on the New Hampshire Grants, in the township of Royalton. In 1783, the last year of the war, a body of British and Indians raided and “burned” Royalton, killing and taking prisoner the people and carrying off or destroying the property. At the time, my great-grandmother was confined to her bed with a babe only three days old. She was taken from her bed and mounted on horseback and her oldest child, two years of age, was mounted with her, while the nurse with the three days old babe was mounted on the other horse and the two women were told to ride for their lives. My great-grandfather took his musket and, with his neighbors and other rallying settlers, went to fight and turn back these last invaders of American soil during the Revolution. The babe borne by the nurse was my grandfather, Weston Wheeler.

When my grandfather was sixteen years old he wore crepe in mourning for George Washington. He served in the Vermont militia during the war of 1812 and is said to have been present at the battle of Lake Champlain. He was married sometime before the war to Miss Sally Fuller, a young lady from Connecticut, by whom he had ten children. Of these, my father, William Wheeler, was the youngest, being born April 17, 1824. My grandfather was a man of more than ordinary ability and force of character and was well educated and had good standing as a strong churchman and citizen. He removed with his family in 1836 to Crawford county, Pennsylvania, and with him, as a part of his family, came my father, who was then twelve years old.

When my father was twenty-two years of age, he very sensibly married Miss Susannah Fry. Susannah is Hebrew for lily. The fair lily my father found growing in “Penn's Woods” and, like a wise man, gathered to himself, became my mother. My father has slept in a soldier's grave this five and forty years, dead on the field of honor, but my mother, still a widow, still true to the one love of her youth, is with me yet. She is wrinkled and old and gray now, weighted down with the burdens of four score and four, but I can remember her when she was tall and straight and young and fair, with hair like the raven's wing. My father, with his family, moved to Iowa in 1854, settling in Allamakee county. In August, 1862, he enlisted in Company A, 27th Regiment of Iowa Volunteer Infantry and on the night of May 30th, 1865, he died in the United States hospital at Prairie du Chien, of disease contracted during General Banks inglorious Red River campaign.

My own story is soon told. I was born more than sixty years since, on the banks of the “Little Conneaut Creek,” in Crawford county, Pennsylvania, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty eight. I was born in a large, rambling old farm house built by my grandfather. In 1854 my father brought me to Iowa. During the winter of 1854-5 my father built what was then considered a large log house. In that log house, which had grown old before I finally left it forever, I lived the happiest years of my life, for it was there I was a boy and it was there I grew up. After I grew up I was elected justice of the peace, read some law and was admitted to the bar. I promptly convicted my first client and then went to Dakota Territory, seeking after other clients to convict. In the meantime I had got religion, joined the church and came within an ace of becoming a preacher.

In Dakota I did fairly well. I settled at Mandan, the county seat of Morton county, and, at that time, 1883, a flourishing railroad town and frontier metropolis and was supposed to be a coming Omaha. Besides convicting a few more clients, I got into politics, was made chairman of the Republican county committee, organized a political machine that could show Tammanay points of improvement, and became a political boss, or rather a sub-boss under Alexander McKenzie, the political king of North Dakota and one of the most sagacious and successful political leaders of machine politics the country has ever produced. Since I have grown old and impotent, I have reformed, but McKenzie, vigorous in health, a giant in body and intellect, has kept on his devious ways, a political boss in North Dakota, a railroad lobbyist in Washington and, at one time in apparent danger of a federal prison in Alaska. When I knew and worked with him in the long ago, McKenzie had a sound head, a good heart and was true as steel to those who trusted him.

His only misfortune was that he worked for the “Corporations” and, therefore, for a master without a soul. I was also a member of the Republican Territorial Committee and when I decided to leave the territory, was permitted to name my successor on the committee. I selected Major A. E. Bovay of Ripon, Wisconsin, but at that time at the head of a colony he had established at Glen Ullin in Morton county. Major Bovay has the honor of being the
founder of the Republican party.

I was county attorney for Morton county, which at that time had all of Dakota west of the Missouri river between the Big Sioux Reservation and the British line attached to it for judicial and other purposes. The law, however, is a jealous mistress and, physically at least, its exactions were too strenuous for me and I gave it up and became, first, city editor of the daily Mandan Pioneer and then of the Bismark Commercial. I have dabbled in newspaper work ever since.

It was during my sojourn in the “West Missouri Country” of northern Dakota, that I met two men who afterward became known the world over. One of these men was Marquis De Mores and the other Theodore Roosevelt. At that time, 1882 to 1887, the two were leading ranchers of that land of bad lands, buttes and coulees. De Mores was a French nobleman, who had married an American heiress, a noted duelist and soldier of fortune. After many adventures in different lands, he was finally treacherously slain by his Tuareg escort south of Tripoli, Africa, while crossing the Desert of Sahara on his way to Fashoda on the Upper Nile. As for Roosevelt, at that time, San Juan Hill, the Presidency, Africa and his return to civilization in a greater than Roman triumph, were all before him.

My health, which has always been a millstone around my neck, did not thrive in the climate of Dakota. This fact, together with a constant longing for Iowa, which at times amounted to actual homesickness, decided me to return to the Hawkeye state. Returning to Iowa, I settled in Cerro Gordo county and have been here ever since. Its people have been my people, its God my God, and here I expect to die and be buried.

Source: WHEELER, J. H. History of Cerro Gordo County, Iowa. Vol. II. Lewis Publ. Co. Chicago. 1910. Transcribed by Jennifer Gunderson (Mar 2021)