My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM R. WHEELER, one of the early settlers of Buffalo county, was born in London, England, March 16, 1846, and is the son of William D. H. and Jane (Hazel) Wheeler. He was brought to the United States by his parents, who located at St. Louis, Mo., in 1847, where they lived for several years. They subsequently located at Alton, Ill., where the father followed his trade as a machinist. He was an industrious, hard-working man; he died in 1880.

The educational advantages of William R. Wheeler were somewhat limited. He attended the common schools until about fifteen years of age, when he entered Scleartloff college, at Alton, Ill., one of the oldest institutions of learning in the state. He gave close application to his studies here for nearly two years.

In June, 1864, Mr. Wheeler enlisted in the One Hundred and Forty-fourth Illinois regiment, and determined to help put down the cruel rebellion. His regiment was sent up and down the Mississippi river twice and participated in a part of the famous Red river expedition. Mr. Wheeler was an active participant in the battle at Vicksburg and afterwards was sent to Alton, Ill., to guard prisoners. He was corporal of the six men detailed to take the rebel general, Marmaduke, from the boat to the prison. Gen. Marmaduke afterwards became governor of Missouri. Mr. Wheeler was mustered out at Camp Butler, on the twenty-third day of July, 1865.

He returned to his home in Illinois and decided to adopt farming as his vocation through life. This he has followed more or less of the time since, but prior to this resolution he followed railroading about two years. He accepted a position as break-man on the Rock Island & St. Louis railroad and was soon afterwards promoted to conductor. His promotion was in recognition of his efforts in preventing a terrible wreck by flagging a train in time to prevent it from plunging into an obstruction on the track.

Mr. Weeeler is one of the first settlers of Buffalo county, having come here from Illinois on the twenty-sixth day of March, 1873. He came with the express purpose of making his home here and to that end took a homestead on section 30 in Valley township. Of course the country was new and settlers few and far between. The broad prairie was well stocked with wild game, such as antelope, deer, and occasionally a buffalo was visible. Mr. Wheeler and Mr. S. C. Ayers killed the last wild buffalo ever seen in the county. Indians were by no means scarce in the days of 1873. It was not an uncommon thing to see five hundred Indians at a time strolling over this part of the country. Mr. Wheeler was not absent from home when the grasshoppers paid their long-to-be-remembered visit to this section of the county. They feasted sumptuously on his promising fields of corn for three years in succession. They boarded with the farmers of Buffalo county as long as the green corn lasted and then they moved on.

The marriage of Mr. Wheeler to Miss Etta M. George was celebrated on the sixteenth day of January, 1874. Mrs. Wheeler was born in Massachusetts, April 14, 1855, and is the daughter of Truman Q. and Abbie M. (Gilfast) George. The former is a native of New Hampshire and the latter of Massachusetts. The children in the Wheeler family number five and are as follows — Hasell, born October 6, 1876; Thyra, born June 7, 1879; Ethel, born November 13, 1882; Viola, born March 24, 1885 and Chester, born March 7, 1890.

Mr. Wheeler has taken considerable interest of late years in the cultivation of various kinds of vegetables and in this particular is one of the most successful men in the county. During the year 1889, he raised and marketed one thousand four hundred bushels of tomatoes, one hundred and eighty-four bushels of small pickles, sixty bushels of onions for which he received $4 per bushel, and seventeen thousand five hundred heads of cabbage. No man thus far in the county has anywhere near equaled this enormous crop of vegetables.

Mr. Wheeler has never specially undertaken to learn any trade, but he possesses rare mechanical talent and is handy at most anything he goes at. Several fine specimens of furniture in his house attest his rare genius in this particular.