My Genealogy Hound

JOHN C. WELLS, carriage manufacturer and undertaker, was born in Nottoway County, Va., September 12, 1812, and is the son of Coleman and Elizabeth (Phillips) Wells. The father and mother were born in Virginia, the former in 1781 and the latter in 1786. The father was a soldier in the war of 1812 and died in 1833. The mother died in Virginia in 1882. Our subject’s grandfather, Giles Wells, was a Virginian and a soldier in the Revolutionary war. He died in Virginia, at a good old age. At the age of fifteen our subject began serving a four years’ apprenticeship at the wagon-maker’s trade and worked at that trade in his native State until 1839, when he immigrated to Williamson County, Tenn., and settled in Franklin, where he carried on the wagon business for nineteen years and then began the carriage business, which, in connection with the undertaking business, he has carried on since the war. June 3, 1834, he married Catherine Robinson, a native of Virginia, born November 27, 1810, and by this union became the father of an interesting family of seven children: James C., Posthenia E., Sarah F., John W., Edward T., Richard P. and Virginia H. Mr. and Mrs. Wells are the grandparents of twenty-seven children. Mr. Wells is a Democrat and a Mason, and this aged couple have been members of the Baptist Church for half a century. He is one of the prominent men of the county and a leading citizen.