Biographical Sketch of Hon. W. S. Wells, Rush Township, Buchanan County, MO

>From "History of Buchanan County, Missouri, Published 1881, St. Joseph
Steam Printing Company, Printers, Binders, Etc., St. Joseph, Missouri.
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Hon. W. S. Wells, of Rushville, was born in Lee County, Virginia, 
September 13, 1812.  His great grandfather was a native of Wales,
and was among the early settlers of Maryland.  His grandfather,
Zachariah Wells, during the Revolutionary War was a resident of
North Carolina, whence he afterwards moved to Lee County, Virginia.
His father, Robert Wells, was born in North Carolina.  He married
Elizabeth Shepherd in Virginia, and moved to Jackson County, 
Missouri in 1826, being thus one of the early settlers of that 
part of the state, where he died in 1853 at the advanced age of
ninety years.  The subject of this sketch received a thorough English
education in his native county, where he afterwards taught school, 
and where on May 8, 1833, he married Miss Lavina Jones, a native of
Grayson County, Virginia, born February 20, 1817.  They have had ten
children, of these James M., Emmett C., Samuel B., Martha J., Minerva,
Celia E., Robert B., and G. W., survive.  May and Albert G. are de-
ceased.  W. S. Wells moved to Missouri in 1829, settling in Jackson
County, and at the end of the year returned to Virginia.  In 1837 he
moved from Virginia to Platte County, Missouri, where in the spring
of 1838, he taught one of the first schools ever opened in that 
section of country.  About the close of the same year, he returned to
Virginia.  In 1843 he again visited Missouri, locating at Wright City,
in the southwest part of the State.  In 1844, he moved to Marshall
County, Alabama, and thence in 1850 to Western Tennessee.  In 1856
he moved to Douglas County, Kansas Territory, from which he was sub-
sequently elected a member of the celebrated Lecompton Convention 
which framed a constitution for the State.  In this election he re-
ceived the unanimous vote of both parties.  In November, 1860, he
moved to Atchison, Kansas, and in the following January, returning to
Missouri, settled in his present home, at Rushville.  In the fall of
1861 he joined General Price's army under Jackson's first call for
troops.  He was in the battle of Pea Ridge, and served till May, 1862
when he returned home.  In May 1866, he embarked in the mercantile
business in Rushville, in which he has since been principally engaged.
In 1874 he was elected by the Democrats a member of the Twenty eighth
General Assembly.  He was re-elected to the same position in 1876,
receiving besides the full Democratic vote of his district, a large
Republican support.  In politics he has all his life been a Democrat.
He has been a member of the old Baptist Church, thirty nine years.  
Of this he is also an ordained minister, and has been preaching since
1853.  He served as justice of the peace for six years, and has been
a notary public since 1873.

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