Wheeler, Orville Agustus

WHEELER, TURCH, MAIN, LOOMIS, COUCH, MULLER, MILLIGAN, LEONARD

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 10/24/2009 at 10:13:20

Wheeler, Orville Agustus

Among the enterprising citizens of Sherman Township, Jasper County, is Orville Augustus Wheeler, to a review of whose honorable career the attention of the reader is now called. An analyzation of his life work shows that he has been dependent upon no inheritance or influential friends for what he has acquired, but he has through his continued effort and capable management gained a desirable property, whereby he is classed among the self-made and influential men of the county, peculiar interest attaching to his career in view of the fact that he has been a resident of the locality of which this history treats all his life, having figured conspicuously in the agricultural and mercantile interests of the western part of the county.

Mr. Wheeler was born in Palo Alto Township, this County, January 23, 1861, the son of Joseph R. and Sarah S. (Turch) Wheeler, the father born in Ohio, December 5, 1834, and the latter in Indiana, February 11, 1842. The father grew to maturity in his native community and received his education there, and when he was twenty years old, in 1854, he came to Jasper County, Iowa, with his father, John Wheeler, and they settled in Kellogg Township, being among the early arrivals there when that section was practically a virgin prairie, dotted only here and there with a rude cabin. They drove from Ohio with a yoke of oxen. Here Joseph R. Wheeler became the owner of forty acres in Palo Alto Township. On this he farmed until 1868, when he traded it for the corner lot in the city of Newton where the opera house now stands. Then for a period of twenty-five years he engaged in buying and selling livestock, becoming one of the best-known and successful stockmen of the county.

During the Civil War he enlisted in Company B, Thirteenth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, in which he served most creditably for a period of three and one-half years, taking part in many important battles and trying campaigns.

He was known to be a man of courage, good habits and public spirit. His death occurred in 1903. There were nine children in his family, named as follows: Mrs. Massilda J. Main, Orville Augustus, of this sketch; Mrs. Clara L. Loomis; Ernest Oliver, of Seattle; Mrs. Viola Mary Couch; Anthony; Mrs. Eunice Muller; Lucella died in infancy; Mrs. Delsie D. Milligan.

Orville A. Wheeler, of this review, grew up in Palo Alto Township and received his education in the public schools there and in the schools of Newton. Afterwards he broke prairie one summer in Hamilton County, then for a year he rented and farmed land in Osborne County. He then came back to Jasper County, where he rented land until 1890 when he bought eighty acres in Sherman Township. This he sold twelve years later and moved to the hamlet of Goddard where he bought grain and live stock, also sold coal and lumber, building up a very satisfactory business. In 1908 he bought the general store here, which he conducted in a successful and satisfactory manner until in January 1911, when he sold out.

Mr. Wheeler is a Democrat politically and he has been school director in his district, but he has never sought political leadership.

On March 23, 1883, Mr. Wheeler was united in marriage with Amanda Abiah Couch, who was born in Seneca Township, Seneca County, Ohio. She is the daughter of Rufus Baker Couch, who lived north of Mingo, Iowa. To Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler two children have been born, Roy Charles and Mrs. Mary Sarah Leonard, living in Poweshiek Township, this county. Past and Present of Jasper County Iowa B. F. Bowden & Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1912 Page 860.