Wheeler-Brownell

 

Henry O. Wheeler and Helen S. Brownell

 
 
 
Henry Osborne Wheeler
(1841 - 1919)
 
Helen Stetson Brownell
(1848 - 1930)
 
 
Henry O. Wheeler grew up in the lumber town of Deposit, New York, where his father was a Judge.  When he was twenty years old, the Civil War erupted and Harry volunteered to serve.  His time with the 27th New york Volunteers was short, however.  Harry was the regimantal color guard in the opening charge at the first Battle of Bull Run.  As his regiment formed to charge the field at Manassas, Virginia, on 21 July 1861, Harry was hit in the left foot by a musket ball.  He was taken from the battleground to the hospital that afternoon.  He would later be celebrated at home as "the first man injured in the Civil War."
 
Returning to Deposit, he worked in the town's Post Office, spent a few years in New Jersey, and finally relocated to DeWitt, Iowa, working as a bookkeeper.  Here he met and fell in love with Helen Brownell, the youngest of John and Mary Ann Brownell's five daughters.  (The girls -- Sarah, Mary Ann, Lucretia, Catherine, and Helen -- were known as "Sate, Mate, Lu, Kate, and Helen."  Why Helen didn't acquire a nickname is anybody's guess.)  Following their marriage, Harry and Helen lived for a while in Illinois, but they returned to Iowa in 1875, moving to Mongoina, where he worked as a bookkeeper for the Iowa Railway Land Company.
 
About 1910, Harry and Helen moved to Cedar Rapids, where their daughter, Bess Steele, lived.  He died there in 1919.  Following harry's death, Helen accompanied her daughter to Los Angeles; she died there in 1930.  Harry and Helen Wheeler are buried in the Elmwood Cemetery in DeWitt, Iowa.  Also buried in the same plot are Helen's parents, John and Mary Ann (French) Brownell.
 
Copyright © 2001 by Edward E. Steele, St. Louis, Missouri.  All rights Reserved.
 
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