William Webb Wheeler

William Webb Wheeler was born February 15, 1845, in Ashtabula County, Ohio, the son of David W. Wheeler and Eliza Webb.

His father was a farmer and he grew up in the country. He attended the local schools and completed his education at Conneaut Academy, Conneaut, Ohio. When he was seventeen he enlisted in the Union Army and participated in campaigns in Tennessee and was at the siege of Nashville. At the end of the Civil War he secured employment as clerk in a railroad office in Nashville, Tennessee. He came to St. Joseph in 1872 at the age of twenty-seven and was employed as bookkeeper and cashier for Tootle & Craig, dry goods merchants. He advanced rapidly and became general manager. In 1877 the firm became Tootle, Hosea & Company. Milton Tootle died in 1887 and Mr. Hosea in 1893. The firm then became Tootle, Wheeler & Motter, and after the withdrawal of the Tootle interest it was reincorporated as Wheeler & Motter Mercantile Company in 1909 with Mr. Wheeler as president.

The Wheeler-Motter Mercantile Company became the largest wholesale house on the Missouri River dealing in dry goods and related lines. The entire territory from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast and from Texas to Canada was covered by sixty-five traveling salesmen.

Mr. Wheeler married in 1879 Miss Helen Smith, daughter of Mrs. Susan Steele Hallack Smith and Dr. J. Hamilton Smith, one of the pioneer physicians of Savannah, Missouri. Her uncle was Dudley Mitchum Steele, and her older half sister, Mary E. Hallack, had married James McCord in 1854. In 1894. Mr. Wheeler purchased from Adam N. Schuster the home at 703 Hall Street, where the family lived through two generations. There were two children: Minnie Steele who married Charles B. Farish, and William Webb. Wheeler, Jr. There were five grandchildren.

Mr. Wheeler served as deacon and elder of the First Presbyterian Church for many years. Starting in 1906 Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler made a series of sea voyages and travels. Mr. Wheeler's letters to friends were so interesting that he was prevailed upon to put into print his accounts of the trips. Each Christmas for six consecutive years the friends of Mr. Wheeler and some of the customers of his business were presented with copies of those privately printed booklets. In November 1924. Mr. Wheeler left St. Joseph for his winter home at Miami, Florida. He became ill there in April 1925 and went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore where he died June 7, 1925.