WELLES

An Ancestry.com record identified the wife of John B Porter as Harriet (Hattie) Wells. The associated pedigree stated that her mother was Jerusha Slater and an unknown Wells, but siblings were Henry Wells and Angelo Wells. I soon learned that the unknown Wells was John P Welles. I did not know the middle name that the "P" represented. An 1850 census record for LaSalle Co, IL shows John P and Jerusha along with a son, Angelo, and a John B Slater, who, because of his age, leads me to conclude that he may be Jerusha's brother. I subsequently looked for a Civil War record for a John P Welles and found a John P Wells, alias Pomroy Wells, who was quite a person. This "Pomroy" also was born in NY, enlisted in IL and served in several units within IL and also was listed as being in the Wisconsin military. One Pomroy was found to have died from wounds suffered at Gettysburg and another discharged in 1862. But neither of these John P Wells were identified as having a wife, Jerusha. I later found an Angelo Welles who was in the Civil War, but from NY. So I looked for John Welles in NY and eventually found a widow's pension record for a John P Welles. An interesting part of this pension file is that the pension was based on a declaration by Angelo that his father died in Wilmington, NC. But, I could not find a record of John actually being in the service. He does not show on the unit's muster roll, nor did the National Archives or NY Archives in Albany show he served, much less in the 85 NY Inf. But, there was such a record for Angelo Prentiss Wells. Angelo enlisted twice. The second time he was a musician.

I found it odd that Angelo and John enlisted in NY when they showed as living in Illinois in 1850; however, the census did show the birth location of both John and Angelo as NY. I then found an 1860 NY census record for John and Jerusha living in Wayne Twsp, Steuben Co along with 3 children; A P, Florence H, and Henry (Nelson). The initial enlistment for Angelo also shows Wayne, Steuben Co as his home address. For a long time I was unable to find any further information about John or his parents. I then, while browsing on the Steuben Co web site, noted a reference to a Historian who would accept questions. I wrote and outlined what I "knew" and what I “sought.” She was unable to tell me definitively who was John's family. But, she did provide me with pages copied from a History of the county. This included a short biography of a Benjamin Welles of Wayne, NY. Furthermore, because Angelo's middle name was Prentiss, I anticipated that there might be some connection between the Welles and Prentiss families. The county history identifies the original Welles as a Ben who had 13 children, with 5 being boys. One of the sons also named Benjamin married a Sarah Nelson and they had 10 children. Ben and Sarah moved to Steuben prior to the birth of their last few children. The boys were James, Sylvester, Benjamin, William, Henry, and Elihu. An online 1820 census shows the first 5 boys with a family and each family had 1 or more males under 10 yrs - the age of the John P Welles/Jerusha Slater; therefore, all were possible parents of John Welles. The historian had information regarding who the John, son of Sylvester, married and since it was not Jerusha, she concluded that Sylvester was not the father of Carol's John P. A copy of a handwritten letter given to me by the Historian’s office has, among other pieces of information, a listing of marriages. Since both Benjamin and William married a Prentiss, i.e., Rebecca Prentiss and Harriett Prentiss, my initial guess was that William with wife Harriett was John P Welles' father. A basis is that one son carries the name Prentiss, the other Nelson, and a daughter the name Harriett. Thus all of his children carry a name common to the "Prentiss" family. Time would let me find additional details regarding the children of these Welles brothers and prove the Welles ancestry.

While on a trip to Rochester, NY, I took a side-trip to the Historian's Office in Bath, NY, which led to the discovery in a book "Death Notices from Steuben Co, NY Newspapers 1797-1884" compiled by Jackson that -- John P Wells, son of SF Welles of Pulteney NY, died in Wilmington. I was unable to find the actual article in the newspaper even after looking through several weeks of papers. I do not know who this SF Welles is nor have I identified a Welles/Wells family with an SF.

As part of my ongoing search to identify SF Welles, I contacted a Joyce Potter who appeared to have historical knowledge of the Welles families. She responded by identifying her web site with family information and pictures. She also sent an ancestral description of the Welles descendants from Noah Welles. I had looked through this information several times before and had been unable to find a John P or S F Welles. After exchanging several more emails with Joyce, I again was looking at her genealogical information when I was struck dumb by what I saw, and had probably looked at before but had not seen. Namely, that Benjamin F. Welles, one of the sons of Dr. Ben Welles, had died in Pulteney, NY. This was the first piece of information that identified a Welles family living in Pulteney. My immediate reaction was that this had to be John P. Wells’ father, the one identified as S. F. Welles living in Pulteney. It was probably no more than a type-setting error when the newspaper article about John P’s death was being printed. Unfortunately, there was no readily available information that listed the children of this Benjamin F. Welles. The different spellings of Wells/Welles in this write-up section are deliberate as there does not seem to be a consistent rule for which is proper.

Marion Springer in the Historian's Office in Bath had sent me numerous pages of information, e.g., census records, copies of notes made by other researchers, and her own notes as she worked to answer a written request for information. An 1855 NY census record for Pulteney shows a J P Wells family, and within a few houses several were several Prentiss families. There also was a B F Wells family; I thought that this probably was the Benjamin F. who I now was convinced was the father of John P. Welles. But, the census only shows the children living with him at that time; the children ranged in age from the eldest daughter, age 35, a son age 32, and 4 addition daughters, ages 19 to 26. A notation from Marion Springer gave names, birth and death dates for 3 of these children, and it showed the married name for daughter Martha. Obviously, no John was included with the family census as he was no longer living with the family at that time. Another insight came from the census record information. All of Benjamin F.'s children showed Steuben as their birth location; whereas B. F. was shown as born in Columbia and wife Rebecca was born in Vermont. The census record for John P. Welles also shows his birth location as Steuben.

I then found an online 1830 census record for Steuben Co; there were only 6 Wells listed, including 3 Benjamin Wells. A Benjamin F., age 40-50, was located in Pulteney Twsp. His family at that time consisted of wife, age 30-40, 2 sons, 1 age 5-10, and another age 10-15 and 2 daughters, 1 age < 5 yrs, and the other age 10-15. An 1825 Pulteney census also showed a Benjamin F. with 3 males and 2 females; a daughter was age <16 yrs at that time. (This census showed that their farm was 40 acres, the amount of livestock and amount of cloth.) These ages agree with the age of the 2 eldest children still living with Benjamin as shown on the 1855 census and correspond to an additional male the age of John P. Wells who was born ca 1817. To me this confirms the match. I have identified the father of John P Wells. I had previously associated names given his sons as coming from his mother, Angelo Prentiss, and grandmother, Henry Nelson.

It is interesting to note that the 1810 census for Wayne, Steuben Co, NY shows a Benjamin F, over age 45 with 4 sons, 2 10-16 and 2 16-26 and wife age 26-45, with 2 daughters, 1 age <10, and 1 10-16. I believe this is for grandfather Benjamin with wife Sarah Nelson, and 6 of their 7 youngest children. The ages agree, except that Sarah is believed to have been over age 45 in 1810 and 1 young daughter under the age of 10 is not identified, though she is believed to have been alive at that time. Son Benjamin, and father of John P., probably was one of those males age 16-26.