Man On the Run

 

The Tombstone of my 3rd great grandparents in Boone, Iowa

Leander and Mary Sheldon Wells have always intrigued me for many reasons. Thus I can't explain why they were the last tombstone of my 3rd great grandparents I have located personally in my attempt to visit all 32 of their final resting places. I haven't kept records but I'm guessing I've located and visited close to two dozen of them over the years and the ones I have that remain are in far flung parts of the state that I don't often visit. Such was the case of Leander and Mary which I only visited a couple years back when I found out that it was on the way to a cross country meet my oldest daughter was running. So I left a couple hours early and spent half the extra time searching a large cemetery for the tombstone above which I finally found. However, doing so didn't address a lot of the questions I have about this couple.

Leander C. Wells was born in Lawrence County, New York, spitting distance from Canada in 1833. His father was an innkeeper in Lisbon which is a tiny hamlet just a couple miles from the banks of the St. Lawrence river. Although unclear of the timing, when Leander and his brothers became of age, they set off for the wilds of Niniger township, Minnesota which today is just SE of the Twin City metropolitan area. There he, and his brothers, signed up for a three year stint in the infantry to fight in the Civil War. While his brother Philander served as a personal body guard to Ulysses S. Grant, Leander didn't get such an assignment and I'm guessing got bored and deserted his unit about 9 months into his service. According to the records, he never made it out of Minnesota for any of his service and so based upon my general understanding of Civil War battles, probably never saw any action. Alternatively, he may had just been missing home because later records would indicate he was married and had one child born right before he left for his service. Whatever the case, his records go cold until I picked them up again in the 1870 Census living in NW Iowa with a wife a now 9 year old child and working as a carpenter. 

He must have been quite the carpenter as I can find numerous newspaper articles of him building schools, houses, barns, and even desks in the courthouse. Although I haven't attempted to trace down any of these things, I'm guessing some of his handiwork may still exist. He also was an innovator of sorts as he developed a method for shutting outside window slats from the inside and was responsible for bringing the first telephones and lines to his town of Cherokee. Life was going great until 1874 when news of a court case upon him start making it into the newspapers. They never specify what the case is about other than a Dr. Conger sued him for $250. Initially the lawsuit resulted in a hung jury but it went to district court where he was found liable for the amount plus another $75 in court costs. Leander appealed the verdict but evidently was unsuccessful because the following spring, a sheriff's sale of his assets was held to satisfy the debt which by then was up to $363.35. 

Leander, having lost everything, set out to rebuild himself and traveled off to the Black Hills of South Dakota which was having a gold rush of sorts at the time. Five months later, he returned to NW Iowa and reported the entire thing was a scam and just overhyped by the media. He reported all this in lengthy articles printed in the local newspaper and fell back into the carpentry trade building houses, barns and such all over the area. By 1880, he started running for local office and eventually one a seat on the city county largely due to his stance on wanting to grand a saloon license. All the other members of the "license-party" were swept into office but Leander, perhaps due to his previously tarnished reputation, won by a single vote.

In 1883, my 3rd great grandmother Mary Sheldon Wells died quite suddenly at the age of 47 while in a town on the opposite side of the state and was buried there. It is a mystery to me what she was doing there and why she was buried there. Her parents, Winter and Elizabeth Lytle Sheldon are surrounded in mystery. They too died at young ages and though the Sheldon family has a huge website devoted to their genealogy, they really don't acknowledge Winter as part of their family tree. I even submitted to their DNA project but it came back inconclusive, I suspect since many of the branches are down my maternal sides of my family tree. I also suspect either Winter and Elizabeth Sheldon or Peter and Mary Shaw Wells maybe lived in the Boone area but haven't been able to pinpoint either of them there for sure.

After the death of Mary, Leander remarried the following year in 1884 in Mason City, in very northeast Iowa to Susan Price. He was found the following year in Deep River in the center part of Iowa working again as a carpenter. For years, the record trails ended there until his death, which I will talk about soon, but as I was compiling my research notes on him, I came across a (new to me) record detailing yet another marriage a year later in 1886 in eastern Nebraska to a previously married woman named Loretta Jane Bower Smith. I don't know what happened to Susan. She disappears from records. 

Due to the 1890 Census being destroyed, the next logical record would be the 1900 Census but I have never been able to find a record of Leander or for his third wife, Loretta. A couple of his children were living in Colorado at the time and due to what comes next, I suspect Leander was too but somehow the Census taker missed him.

The last records I have for Leander all stem around his gruesome demise. He was working as a night watchman for the railroad in Colorado Springs, Colorado and died in a fire. Initially it was blamed on robbery or some other malicious crime but the following investigation and autopsy revealed that he probably died just fighting the fire. In a twist of fate, his son found out about it while on the train to visit his dad that day and overheard two fire marshals talking about the watchman who had essentially been cremated in the fire. 

Leander's death occurred on 26 Jan 1901 and he was most likely buried in Colorado Springs initially as Find a Grave has a plot for him there in a cemetery but as we can see from the tombstone picture above, it is likely he was exhumed at some point and buried with his first wife in Boone, Iowa. His  brother Philander is buried nearby as well as several of their children.

Although a picture of Leander and his wife Mary remains illusive, two of the ten I have yet to locate, I do have a picture of Philander taken in his Union military uniform.

Philander Wells