Wells, Henry W.

Born: 1833-06-20 Oswego County, New York

Died: 1908-01-07 Peoria, Illinois

Flourished: 1855 to 1865 Cambridge, Illinois (Henry Co.)

Henry W. Wells, attorney and soldier, was born in Pulaski, New York, and came to Kewanee, Illinois, with his family as a child. Following the death of his father in 1844, Wells and his family resettled in Galesburg, where he was educated. In about 1849 he worked in Peoria for a year, then attended the State and National Law School in Ballston Spa, New York. Wells graduated from the institution in 1853 and returned to Illinois where he taught school in Peoria County for a term. He entered the Peoria law partnership of Johnston & Blakesley as a student in 1854 and opened his own legal practice in Cambridge the following year. During the Civil War, Wells enlisted in August 1862 in the 112th Regiment of Illinois Infantry, of which he was appointed adjutant. He was discharged from this unit in November 1863 and promoted to major, serving in a variety of staff positions, ultimately serving from April 1864 through the end of the war as chief of artillery for the third division of the Twenty-Third Corps of the Army of the Ohio. After the war Wells returned to Cambridge for a year before settling permanently in Peoria. In politics, he was a Republican. Wells married Demaris C. Showers in 1859 and is not known to have had any children.

Peoria City and County Illinois (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1912), 2:168; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Galesburg, Knox County, IL, 349; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Henry County, 8 September 1859, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Cambridge, Henry County, IL, 283; Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; B. F. Thompson, History of the 112th Regiment of Illinois Volunteer Infantry, in the Great War of the Rebellion (Toulon, IL: Stark County News, 1885), 117, 119, 336; Kewanee Daily Star-Courier (IL), [8] January 1908, 1:7; Gravestone, Wethersfield Cemetery, Kewanee, IL.