Charles M. Wells, Rapides Parish, La
Submitted by: Suzanne Shoemaker

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Source: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana
The Southern Publishing Company, Chicago & Nashville,  1890

     CHARLES M. WELLS is residing on a large and fertile plantation, near
Lecompte, and is one of the thriftiest and most successful planters in the
parish, everything about his place indicating that a man of intelligence,
enterprise and industry is at the helm.  He was born in 1846, and in
addition to attending the common schools near his home, he attended the
Louisiana University, a military school near his home, for some time prior
to the war, and in 1864 received a midshipman's birth from Jefferson Davis,
on board a vessel built for the Confederacy in England.  He and a companion
went to England, but the English had grown fearful of trouble with the
United States.  Taking advantage of the situation, Mr. Wells entered school
in England, afterward France, and at the end of three years returned to his
home he did little except to amuse himself, and being very fond of both
hunting and fishing, he spent much time with his rod and gun by river and
lake, and in the woodlands along the Red and other rivers of Louisiana,
trying his skill as a marksman and angler.  He finally determined to turn
his attention to something more useful, and engaged in planting, and is now
one of the most successful men of this calling in the parish.  He expects
to give his whole time to the raising of sugar cane in the near future, but
unlike most people engaged in that business, he advocated that sugar tariff
would be detrimental to the sugar consumer.  His estate comprises some
1,600 acres of fine land, admirable adapted to the raising of sugar cane or
cotton.  He was married in 1884 to Miss Florence Blackman, by whom he has
four children:  Jeanette, Josephine, Ellen M. and an infant.