Mark Wentworth Sheafe Biography


	This biography appears on pages 704-707 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. I (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

	This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit 
	organizations for their private use. 

	Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval 
	system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other 
	means requires the written approval of the file's author.

      This file is part of the SDGENWEB Archives. If you arrived here inside
      a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at

      http://usgwarchives.org/sd/sdfiles.htm



	A photo of Gen. Mark W. Sheafe faces page 704.


	MARK WENTWORTH SHEAFE. - In a publication which purports to touch 
upon the history of the men and forces whose contribution to the 
development, splendid advancement and material prosperity of the great 
commonwealth of South Dakota has been of distinctive scope and 
importance, it is but consistent that more than passing attention be 
accorded to the distinguished citizen and honored pioneer whose name 
initiates this paragraph and who has been of marked service to the 
state through various avenues of usefulness.  

	General Sheafe, who is one of the leading citizens of Watertown, 
Coding ton county, is a native of the Empire state of the Union, having 
been born in the city of Brooklyn, New York, on the 18th of May, 1844, 
and being a son of Mark Wentworth Sheafe and Mary Ann (Cook) Sheafe. 
His father was a shipper and merchant in the West Indian and South 
American trade, and for twenty-six years was a sea captain, commanding 
his own ship. His father served for a short period in the war of 1812, 
and subsequently was for many years a resident of Buenos Ayres, which 
is now a part of the Argentine Confederation. In the agnatic line the 
subject of this sketch is a scion of the family of Wentworths, whose 
genealogy is traced back in England to as early a date as the year 910, 
the records being authentic and still extant. This ancient family was 
of Saxon origin and its history shows that its representatives fought 
against William the Conqueror in defense of their native land, while 
the annals of English history establish the fact that members of the 
family held in the various generations positions of great honor under 
the British throne. A notable case was that of Sir Thomas Wentworth, 
earl of Stafford, who was prime minister to King Charles I and lord 
lieutenant of Ireland. He was executed in the Tower of London in the 
year 1615, having been in a most dastardly manner abandoned by his 
king, who, in the hope of saving his own life, betrayed his faithful 
prime minister into the hands of the enemies, the Puritans. Latterly we 
find a member of this historic family incumbent of the position of 
governor of one of the New Hampshire provinces in America under King 
George III, prior to the war of the Revolution. Governor Benning 
Wentworth, one of the last of the royal governors of New Hampshire, was 
the great grandfather of the subject of this sketch, while it may be 
further noted that Hon. John Wentworth, commonly known as "Long John" 
Wentworth, one of the first mayors of the city of Chicago, was a second 
cousin of the General.  

	The family of Sheafe originated in quaint and historic old 
Cranbrook, England, and the ancestry is authentically traced back only 
to the year 1520. Soon after the landing of the Pilgrims in 
Massachusetts one Jacob Sheafe, an ancestor of the subject, settled in 
Boston, and the records of that city indicate that he died in 1658, and 
his remains now lie in the old colonial burying ground in the heart of 
the city of Boston and adjacent to the old "King's Chapel," an ante 
Revolutionary relic. A tablet of bronze set in the iron gate of the 
fence surrounding the little burying ground indicates the authenticity 
of the interment mentioned. The history of Boston states that this 
Jacob Sheafe brought from England the first carriage introduced into 
the Massachusetts colony. The family name of the mother of the subject 
of this sketch was Cook, and this family at one time owned Bunker's 
Hill, at Charlestown, Massachusetts, where a battle of that name should 
have been fought, but historic facts determine, unfortunately for the 
romantic associations in the connection, that the conflict actually 
took place at Breed's Hill, adjacent thereto. Revolutionary history 
establishes the fact that Captain Enoch Cook, great-grandfather of the 
subject of this sketch, participated in the first battle with the 
British at Concord, Massachusetts, and that he had charge of the arms 
and munitions of war while the Continental troops made their famous 
march from that point to Lexington and Bunker Hill, in which battles he 
took part.  

	Mark Wentworth Sheafe, to whom this sketch is dedicated, received 
his early educational discipline in the city schools of Boston, being 
there graduated in the high school as a member of the class of 1861, 
having fitted himself for Harvard College and having passed a 
satisfactory examination for entrance to that institution. The habits 
and tastes of his early youth were decidedly toward a free and 
unconstrained life, his happiest boyhood days being passed in the 
woods, with his dog and gun, and as a result the west soon appealed 
strongly to him as the land of promise, so that shortly after leaving 
school he accompanied his father to Wisconsin, desiring to engage in 
business in the new and progressive west. In 1862 he returned to 
Massachusetts for the purpose of tendering his services in defense of 
the Union, whose integrity was in jeopardy by reason of the war between 
the states, and being desirous of going to the front with those who had 
been his boyhood friends and schoolmates. After serving his time and 
receiving his honorable discharge he again repaired to the west and 
engaged in business in Evansville, Wisconsin. About that time the great 
territory of Dakota seemed to offer a field of great promise, and 
imbued with this idea General Sheafe, in 1872, journeyed to this 
territory, where he believed he could find a broader field for the 
exercise of his energies and abilities, and settled at Elk Point, which 
is now the county seat of Union county, South Dakota, where he engaged 
in the lumber business. meeting with distinctive success. At that time 
no railroad entered the great domain of the territory of Dakota, but 
the "Dakota Southern" was building toward Yankton, and when the track 
was laid to a point within four miles of Elk Point he was enabled to 
ship lumber over this road instead of hauling it in by team from Sioux 
City, Iowa to which means he had previously had recourse. Thus it 
happened that the first shipment of freight by rail into Dakota 
Territory was made by General Sheafe, this being in the autumn of 1872. 
In 1877 he purchased the flouring mills at Elk Point, one of the first 
plants of the sort erected in the territory, and he there continued to 
be engaged in business until 1892. In 1885 he received the appointment 
as register of the United States land office at Watertown, at the hands 
of President Cleveland, and took up his residence in this city in July 
of that year. He then became interested in the Watertown National Bank, 
of which he was vice-president, and also the Dakota Loan & Trust 
Company, an important financial institution whose stockholders were 
residents of New England. In 1889 he was made president of this company 
and continued as its chief executive officer until it closed up its 
business, on November 1, 1903. He has also had large interests in 
cattle on the plains and ranges west of the Missouri river and has 
valuable mining interests in Mexico, principally silver propositions.  

	Reverting to the military record of the General, we will say that 
it had its inception in June, 1862, at Boston, Massachusetts, where he 
enlisted as a private in Company H, Forty-fourth Massachusetts 
Volunteer Infantry. This regiment was made up of young men of high 
standing and character in the community, the average age of its members 
being but twenty-two years. Its nucleus was the old New England Guard, 
an organization which had been in existence since the war of 1812 and 
which had sent many of its members into that war. He proceeded to the 
front with his regiment and participated in numerous battles and 
skirmishes, serving faithfully and valiantly until the expiration of 
his term of enlistment, when he was mustered out and received his 
honorable discharge. He was not thereafter personally identified with 
military affairs again until 1885, when he organized the Second 
Regiment of the Dakota National Guard, receiving a commission as 
colonel from Hon. Gilbert A. Pierce, who was then governor of the 
territory. This position he held, save for an interim of two years, 
until the outbreak of the Spanish-American war, having in the meanwhile 
brought the regiment up to a high standard in its personnel, drill, 
discipline and faithful service. In 1898 he received a commission as 
brigadier general of United States volunteers, from the late lamented 
President McKinley, and was assigned to duty at Camp Alger, Virginia, 
in command of the First Brigade, Second Division, Second Army Corps, 
which brigade consisted of the Third New York, the One Hundred and 
Fifty ninth Indiana and the Twenty-second Kansas regiments. At the 
termination of the war with Spain the General returned to his home in 
Watertown and resumed his duties as president of the Dakota Loan & 
Trust Company. It should be noted in the connection that at the time of 
this war he was the only general appointed to represent the three 
states of North and South Dakota and Nebraska, a significant 
distinction.  

	In 1878 General Sheafe was elected mayor of Elk Point, retaining 
this incumbency four consecutive years. It was within his regime as 
head of the municipal government that the Missouri river valley was 
inundated, as all old settlers will remember, and to add to the 
distress and danger an epidemic of smallpox raged simultaneously in the 
state, but it may be said to the credit of Elk Point and its executive 
and other officials that no life was lost either by flood or disease at 
this time. As before noted, the General was appointed register of the 
land office at Watertown in 1885, remaining in tenure of the position 
until 1889 inclusive, while in 1893 he was again appointed to this 
office, which he held for another four years, retiring in the spring of 
1897. In public enterprises he has contributed largely in the way of 
adding to the wealth of the territory and state, in the construction of 
various buildings. In 1874 he was elected to the territorial senate, 
from Union county, and at this session of the legislature much was 
accomplished toward hastening the development of the territory. In 1890 
he was elected to the state senate from Codington county, thus being a 
member of the second general assembly after the admission of South 
Dakota to the Union, and he proved a valuable working member of the 
upper house, the statutes of the commonwealth showing many laws which 
are the result of bills introduced by him.  

	In his political views General Sheafe is, always has been and 
ever hopes to be a Jeffersonian Democrat, with all that the term 
implies believing that this republic was intended by the Revolutionary 
fathers to be an asylum for the oppressed and a "government of the 
people, for the people and by the people," but at the date of this 
writing he freely gives voice to the opinion that the objects of the 
farmers of the nation have been thwarted and that, it has become 
government "of the many for the benefit of the few," in consequence of 
failing to heed the wise injunction of the founder of the Democratic 
party, "Equal and exact justice to all and specie privileges to none." 
The conditions today obtaining he holds as a matter of personal regret 
and sorrow. General Sheafe has been affiliated with the Masonic 
fraternity since 1865, and in 1870 was elected master of Union Lodge, 
No. 32, at Evansville, Wisconsin; also a member of the fraternity of 
Elks. He was reared in the faith of the Protestant Episcopal church, 
and is a communicant of the same.  

At Evansville, Wisconsin, in 1866, General Sheafe was united in 
marriage to Miss Cassie A. Hall, and they became the parents of three 
children, Mary Wentworth, Anne Wentworth and William Wentworth, the 
first named having died in infancy. In 1882 the General consummated a 
second marriage, being then united to Miss Agnes Spark, who was born in 
Edinburgh, Scotland, while her parents were residents of Elk Point, 
this state, at the time of the marriage, which was solemnized in the 
city of Omaha, Nebraska. Of this union have been born two children, 
Mark Wentworth, Jr., and Mary Agnes.  

General Sheafe is a man of genial and companionable nature, 
having none of the proclivities of the recluse, and he has the faculty 
of gaining and retaining friends in all classes of society, while among 
the number are some of the distinguished citizens of the nation, 
notably General Fred D. Grant, son of the President, and now in command 
of the Department of the Lakes of the federal military service, with 
headquarters in Chicago. In 1877 our subject and General Grant made an 
expedition into the Indian country west of the Missouri river, 
arranging for the "right of way," with the Sioux Indians, from said 
river to the Black Hills.  

The respect and admiration of General Sheafe for the late 
President McKinley are unbounded. In 1897 he was delegated to represent 
the state at the inaugural of President McKinley and was assigned for 
duty as his body guard or personal escort. When, in a private 
interview, he was asked by the President how it chanced that he, a 
Democrat, should have been thus placed as a representative of his 
state, the General replied by saying that he had come out of admiration 
for the President and to "lend respectability to the occasion." A year 
subsequently, when in Washington for the purpose of thanking the 
President for his commission as brigadier general, Mr. McKinley 
recalled the event and promised that he would keep his eye on the "lone 
Democrat."  

Like his ante-Revolutionary ancestors, General Sheafe sought the 
west and its freedom, being unable to content himself in the crowded 
cities of the east, with their narrow ways and avaricious worship of 
money alone. In the territory of Dakota he foresaw that a rich empire 
would he carved out of the far-stretching prairies which were then 
inhabited only by the Indians and that a splendid and advanced 
civilization would come with the passing of the years. He has lived to 
see the territory of Dakota with but five or six organized counties in 
1872 and with a population not exceeding forty thousand persons, now, 
after a residence here of thirty-three years, composed of two immense 
states with a population aggregating eight hundred thousand people, 
happy and contented, and he feels proud of the part that has been his 
in aiding in this development and magnificent progress.