Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1915
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 651
MAJ. JOHN R. WHEELER

This distinguished soldier in the Civil War was a noted lumber dealer in Iowa and Nebraska in the sixties, seventies and eighties of the last century. He was a brave soldier and an energetic, successful business factor at Dunlap, this county, being the pioneer in the lumber business at that as well as other points within Harrison county.

Major WHEELER was born in New York state in 1833, a son of James WHEELER, the grandson of Josiah H. WHEELER and a great-grandson of Francis WHEELER, one of the minute men at Concord, Massachusetts, who served through the Revolution that finally gave this country its national independence. Josiah H. WHEELER also served his country as a brave soldier. Maj. John R. WHEELER was reared in the Empire state, and was trained in the lumber industry, which his father generally followed, and in 1856 went to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he remained until December, 1861, when he enlisted in Company G, Sixteenth Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, going to the front as captain of his company. He was promoted in 1864 to the position of major of his regiment. He received two bad wounds, the first a bullet hole through the upper lip at the famous battle of Pittsburg Landing, which was his first engagement. His company lost six men, with thirty-three wounded, in that engagement. On July 21, 1864, at Atlanta, he was wounded with a bullet through both of his thighs and was kept under fire ten days thereafter before he could be removed from the field. The surgeons advised amputation of one limb, but he would not submit to it. He took part in the battle of Pittsburg Landing, Corinth and others of the great engagements of that awful conflict. In the list of battles where he proved himself a soldier true may be named Vicksburg, the siege of Atlanta and Wise's Forks, where he met Bragg and Hook.

After his return to peaceful occupations, Major WHEELER again embarked in the lumber trade along the line of the Chicago and Northwestern railroad in Iowa, dealing at Clinton, Boone, Denison, Dunlap, Woodbine and Blair, Nebraska. He opened the first lumber yard at Dunlap, this county, in the summer of 1867, from three car loads which he had side-tracked at that point, there being no station-house or postoffice, or other object to mark the spot of a townsite. Later he built an office and engaged an ox team to draw his first invoice of lumber to his �yard.� The words �Lumber Office� painted on his little office building in 1867 were still plainly seen as late as 1895. For a number of years the lumber business flourished in these parts, and one hundred and fifty car loads was an average annual distribution over the wild, bleak prairies of Crawford and Harrison counties. Major WHEELER's trade extended forty miles in all directions. The first year he operated a yard in Woodbine, having located there in December, 1866, when there was only one completed building in the place. He was obliged to send to Boone for a heating stove with which to heat his office. Lumber was very high, the freight on a car load from Clinton to Woodbine being one hundred dollars, and dimension stuff sold at forty dollars a thousand feet. Medium-grade flooring was sixty dollars, while shingles sold at eight dollars. Grain brought a high price, and farmers needed lumber, even at these high figures. Major WHEELER continued in the lumber business from 1865 for more than a quarter of a century. Major WHEELER was a Democrat, belonged to the Knights of Pythias at Dunlap and was an energetic, well-behaved pioneer lumberman. In 1876 Major WHEELER married Nancy Tyler, daughter of William and Jane (Brown) Tyler, of Wisconsin, the former of whom was a native of Ohio and the latter a native of New York state, and to this union was born one son, John R., who was born November 10, 1879, and who lives in Mesita, Colorado, where he is engaged in the lumber business.

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