Interesting Arcadians - Henry Wells
Arcadia Town Historian
As every historian knows, to be successful, one needs to be tenacious and be something of a detective. Tenacity is needed to be able to pull from the misty past knowledge of interesting events as well as facts about personages.
Some time ago, I read in the old NEWARK UNION, a copy of a paper delivered at a meeting of the old Arcadia Historical Society, prepared by one James Reeves, Jr., in which he placed Henry Wells as a one-time resident of West Arcadia. This raised three interesting questions: Who was James Reeves? Where was 'West Arcadia'? And was this really the Henry Wells of Wells Fargo fame?
The answers to the first two questions were fairly easy to determine. The answers to the last took more research.
I learned that James Reeves was an East Palmyra relative of the large Arcadia family who were among the earliest settlers in this area, coming here from New Jersey in 1797.
West Arcadia was a tiny, short-lived settlement only a few feet east of the Arcadia-Palmyra town line, about one-half mile west of Hydesville.
Although James Reeves was a lifelong area resident, he was, obviously, a near neighbor of West Arcadia. But what would Henry Wells have been doing in West Arcadia when, even as a young married man, the settlement's only 'industry' was a small saw mill? I still don't get it!
The easy part was learning the basic facts in the life of Henry Wells. One puzzle, though, was Reeves' statement that Wells' wife was Sarah Daggett, 'who resided in West Arcadia (after her marriage to Henry Wells.)'
The Dictionary of American Biography records that Henry Wells 'married' Sarah Daggett, who died in Albany on October 13, 1859. In 1861 he married, as his second wife, Mary, the daughter of Henry Prentice of Boston.
John Daggett, Jr., (1832-1918), son of Newark's first industrialist and mayor, wrote in a letter to the old NEWARK UNION in 1905 that his sister married Henry Wells while still living at home. Daggett was, apparently, too modest to remind his Newark residents that he had served two terms as California's Lieutenant Governor, but why would he neglect to say that she had married Henry Wells, who by then had achieved both fame and fortune? I surely wouldn't have!
While, obviously, a shrewd and busy business man, Henry Wells' personal life may seem to us today even more humdrum than that of the average Arcadian to the local townspeople of his day. In spite of this, he became rich, famous and a generous philanthropist whose enterprises were a boon to the business life of America from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific for some 30 years.
The D.A.B. gave the highlights of Henry Wells' 30-year business career, which, while active and productive, seems to have been rather colorless even for that day and age.
He was born in Thetford, Vermont on December 12, 1805, but removed with his parents to 'central New York at an early age. Here he worked on a farm and attended school in Fayette, New York. At 16, having finished his schooling, he was apprenticed to Jessup & Powers, tanners and shoemakers, in the then tiny village of Palmyra.' He there met and married Sarah Daggett in 1841.
'He became agent at Albany for Harnden's Express between New York and Albany, and was himself the messenger, making a weekly trip on five or six railroads and two large stage lines.' Having thus left Wayne County, apparently never to return to live, he entered the transportation business, which was to be his life-work, and the source of considerable wealth for him. 'He carried mail at six cents for a single letter ... while the government charged from two to four times as much. With James W. Hale, he offered a thorough service from New York, Boston, and Bangor, Maine, vigorously opposed by the government ... 'In 1844 he opened the line between Buffalo and Detroit, as Wells & Co., with William G. Fargo as messenger. The service, using lake-steamers, and wagons and stages in winter, rapidly expanded to Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. In 1866 he sold his interest in the western service and removed from Buffalo to New York City to handle the eastern business ... and opened offices in London and Paris.
In 1852, with associates, he organized Wells, Fargo Co. for business in California ... The Wells Fargo interests also took over the pony express for the last months of its service, which ended with the completion of the telegraph in 1861 ... East of the Missouri River, the Merchants Express Co. (a Wells enterprise) became, in 1863, the American Express Co.
At the time of the consolidation, Wells retired as president. For the last ten years of his life he traveled extensively. At his home in Aurora he was president of the First National Bank and the first president of the Cayuga Lake Railroad. In 1868 he founded Wells Seminary, now Wells College. He established schools for stammerers in several cities, presumably because he suffered from an impediment in speech. (James Reeves, in his paper, had said that Sarah Daggett Wells had traveled with her husband to his more important business meetings to 'interpret' for her husband because of his speech problem.)
He died in Glasgow, Scotland, and was buried in Auburn, Henry Wells was the subject of seven books written between 1858 and 1931, which provided much of the information for his biography in The Dictionary of American Biography.
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