My Genealogy Hound

J. B. WHEELER. An old settler of Buffalo county and a man of good personal record, and one, therefore, deserving of recognition in this volume, is J. B. Wheeler, of the town of Gibbon. Mr. Wheeler came to Buffalo county in Oct. 1873, and settled on the southeast quarter of section 28, township 10, range 14 west, lying in Valley township, on which quarter section he filed a soldier’s homestead claim, he made his improvements, secured his patent and lived on his homestead, engaged in farming for a period of nine years, at the end of which time he sold his place and moved in September, 1882, into the town of Gibbon, where he has since resided. He has been variously engaged in recent years, among other things having held the office of constable of Gibbon township for six years, having been appointed to that office in 1884 to fill a vacancy and subsequently elected and re-elected till the beginning of the present year. He has also been the auctioneer of the town and township for more than four years, in which capacity he has done a vast amount of work of an official and semi-official nature. It is needless to rehearse the incidents attending Mr. Wheeler’s settlement in Buffalo county at an early date, and the subsequent trials through which he passed in his efforts to make for himself and family a home in the West. It will be sufficient to say that since he cast his lot in the county he has been a resident there, and that he passed through the season of grasshoppers and dry years and the hard times which these brought, enduring as much of the hardships and privations as any, and fighting the battle as heroically to the end as did even the most courageous. Men are to be measured by their means and opportunities, and praise and blame are to be apportioned according to one’s chances and endowments. So judged it may be recorded that the subject of this sketch has borne his part in the settlement of his adopted county, and, if he has not succeeded quite so well financially as others, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has made the best of his opportunities for himself, and in so doing has well served the common good.

Mr. Wheeler is the only representative of his family in the county or even in the state; it will be well, therefore, to record some of the facts of his earlier personal career and his ancestral history for the benefit of those of his name who may have to resort to this volume in years to come as the only existing repository of these facts.

Jervis B. Wheeler is a New Englander by birth and a descendant of Puritan stock. His people have been natives of Massachusetts for several generations. His father, Avery P. Wheeler, was born and reared in Acton, Mass., and lived there most of his life. He was a mechanic and led an honest, industrious, useful life. He died at Dracut in his native state, in 1887, at the advanced age of eighty-four. Mr. Wheeler’s mother bore the maiden name of Adeline Bates, and she was born and reared in Bellingham, Mass., of old Bay State stock; was a woman of great strength of character and kind christian impulses, being a life-long member of the Methodist church. She died in July, 1883, at the age of seventy-six. These were the parents of nine children, all of whom reached maturity, became the heads of families, and are now living. These are — Avery Gilbert, Jervis B., Albert B., Cephas E., Adelaid and Adeine, twins; Darwin E., Sybil and Sarah. The second of these, Jervis B., with whom this sketch is especially concerned, was born in Mendon, Mass., November 14, 1833. He was reared in Mendon, South Brookfield and Hopkinton, Mass., mainly, however, in the last-mentioned place, and subsequently lived at Framingham and Yarmouth, the same state, being a resident of Hopkinton in 1862, when he went into the army. Mr. Wheeler was only one of the many gallant men whom the patriotic old Bay State furnished for the defense of the Union, but inasmuch as the command in which he served has a record distinguished for gallant fighting and heroic endurance above the ordinary, which record he helped to make, it will be appropriate in this sketch to give the outlines of his military career somewhat in full. Mr. Wheeler enlisted in the service August 7, 1862, going into the First Massachusetts heavy artillery. The history of his regiment shows that it was recruited in Essex county as the Fourteenth infantry. It left the state in August, 1861, proceeding to Washington, where it was placed on garrison duty. It was changed to heavy artillery in January, 1862, receiving new recruits for each company of the original organization, and two new companies, of one of which Mr. Wheeler was a member. The first battalion was ordered on field service at Maryland Heights, but the regiment proper did not go to the front till May, 1864. It then served as an infantry command to Grant’s Virginia campaign. It joined the Army of the Potomac, May 17, 1864, having been assigned to Tyler’s division of heavy artillery, then serving as infantry. It was in the engagements at Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor and Petersburg, and intermediate smaller affairs, sustaining heavy losses in each. At Spottsylvania it suffered a loss of fifty killed, three hundred and twelve wounded and twenty-eight missing, and at Petersburg its loss in killed was thirty-one, wounded two hundred and twenty-two, and missing, one hundred and ninety-four. Mr. Wheeler’s term of enlistment having expired in July, 1864, he did not serve after that date. But it may be added that his command, which thus gallantly began its duty in the field, continued to the close of the war gathering new honors for itself in each succeeding engagement. It was one of the nine heavy artillery regiments of the Union army that sustained a loss of over two hundred men actually killed in battle. It was one of the sixty regiments, out of the entire two thousand of the Union army, that sustained the greatest losses in confederate prisons, its loss by incarceration being one hundred and two men. Its total loss in killed, wounded, captured and missing was nine hundred and eight-four men out of a total enrollment of two thousand five hundred and twenty-four. These figures are eloquent. They speak volumes for the living and for the dead of the gallant First Massachusetts heavy artillery.

At the close of his term of service, Mr. Wheeler returned to Massachusetts, where he lived engaged in various occupations till coming to Nebraska in 1873. One more fact, without which this sketch would be incomplete, must now be recorded — the fact of Mr. Wheeler’s marriage. He was united in matrimony March 30, 1858, to Paulina Walker, of Wareham, Mass. Mrs. Wheeler was born at Plymouth, and is a daughter of Elijah and Hannah (Vaughn) Walker, her father being a native of Vermont and her mother a native of Massachusetts. Her father was a farmer in earlier years and worked in the iron foundries in late life. He was a sober, industrious, upright man, greatly devoted to his family and setting before them in his own life an example of industry, sobriety and self-help worthy of their following. He died in Massachusetts, where he had lived the greater part of his life, in the fall of 1887, at the age of eighty. Mrs. Wheeler’s mother, who was a kind-hearted christian woman, died in her native state in the fall of 1888, at the age of eighty-four. These were the parents of eight children, of whom Mrs. Wheeler is the sixth, the others being — Sarah, Elizabeth, Annette and two boys, who died in early childhood, and Hannah A. and Rebecca. Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler are the parents of four children, whose christian names are — Willie C., Harry E., Edith A. and Lena A.

It would be next to impossible for a man of Mr. Wheeler’s personal history and family traditions to be anything but a republican in politics. He has voted that ticket since the formation of the party and is a stanch believer in the principles of his party. He and his wife are zealous members of the Methodist church and contribute in accordance with their means to all charitable purposes.