William E. Wheeler by Mary Jane Fritzen, 4 March 2004
Among the noteworthy pioneers of Idaho Falls was Sarah Jane Bailey Wheeler, mother of the first editor and publisher of The Idaho Register, William E. Wheeler. She was probably the oldest pioneer here when she died in 1918 at age 96. After she had been widowed in Illinois in 1874, she came west to join her son William, who had started a newspaper in Evanston, Wyoming Territory. When William moved to Blackfoot, Bingham County, Idaho, then married and brought his bride from Denver to Eagle Rock, Sarah Jane went elsewhere for fifteen years to live with her married daughter, but returned in her old age to spend her last fifteen years in Idaho Falls.
This practice of aging parents, particularly widowed mothers, coming to Idaho to live with their pioneering children is not uncommon, but is evidence of the high value our settlers placed on their families. It is also evidence of their trust in family values, such as the Ten Commandments, which include, “Honor thy father and Mother.” In the
home of William and his wife Elizabeth, Sarah Jane lived past her 96th birthday, having made many friends in Idaho Falls. She died after a short illness on 17 May 1918.
It was just a year later on the 17th of May 1919 when Judge William E. Wheeler, 77, retired editor and a Justice of the Peace, buried in thought, inattentively crossed the familiar street, Broadway, not far from his home and office. He was probably remembering the past when he was struck by an automobile. Wheeler, who was dragged several feet, struck his head on the pavement. The driver of the White Star Laundry car was later exonerated as he could not stop in time, and was obeying the speed limit of six miles per hour at the Park Avenue crossing. Two days later, Wheeler died at his home on Capital Avenue.
“William E. Wheeler was a builder of this country where he has lived and worked for 40 years,” the newspaper wrote. “Of that strong and sturdy New England stock, he was that character of men, who . . . preferred to be a trail blazer and to help to make a path for others to follow. To the modern day citizen of Idaho Falls and Bonneville County, William E. Wheeler may not be so well known, but to the men and women who made this country possible, he is well known, admired and respected.
“He was one of the remaining few who knew this country as it was... by whose efforts the country has been made what it is.... A man of strong convictions... strength and ruggedness of character, he possessed the most kindly spirit and many are his acts of charity and good, known only to the beneficiary.... He attacked what he thought was the wrong and upheld that which he believed to be right with a strong fighting spirit. . . . [He] was one of those rare characters, that people knew where he stood on questions of personal and public interest. . . . Today the community . . . pays respect and tribute to one of its citizens who was a builder for good.” (Idaho Register, 20 May 1919)
He was fearless in defending his neighbors. In 1904, for example, he refused to support a fellow Republican, Senator Fred T. Dubois. Dubois, who had disfranchised Mormons by making the “test oath” part of the state constitution when we became a state in 1890, tried again to make political hay by attacking the Mormons in 1904. Wheeler would have nothing to do with it and editorialized reasonably against Dubois’s tactics.
Short Biography of William E. Wheeler
When William E. Wheeler, justice of the peace and retired editor of the Idaho Register, suddenly died from an accident 19 May 1918, Idaho Falls paid tribute to one who had devoted his life to building up this community. “An exceptionally long line of cars followed the remains to Rose Hill cemetery” (Idaho Falls Times, 22 May 1919).
William Edward Wheeler was born in Vermont 29 August 1843. His parents were both native New-Englanders–his mother Sarah Jane Bailey of Vermont, his father Samuel Dexter Wheeler, from Maine. When William was about 15 he moved with his
family west to Illinois. Near the end of the Civil War, William, 21, enlisted in the 146th Illinois Infantry, where he served one year in that state. Later he fondly remembered his association with the Grand Army of the Republic. In 1868, when he was 25, he began traveling west for Bluff City Printing Company of Council Bluffs, and in 1869 visited Salt Lake City. Two years later, he pushed West into Wyoming Territory and acquired a small daily newspaper in Evanston. During his six years in Evanston, his father died in Illinois, and his mother and younger sister came to live with him in Evanston.
In July of 1880 Wheeler moved his paper to Blackfoot, Idaho, and renamed it “The Blackfoot Register.” He was a pioneer, as at that time there were just two other newspapers published in Idaho territory. While in Blackfoot he often visited Eagle Rock, which had developed with the Utah-Northern railroad that came from Utah in 1879 and continued into Montana. While reporting in Denver earlier William had met Elizabeth Dougherty, a school teacher, whom he married there on 19 December 1883. He was 40; she was 34, and an excellent proof-reader. On Christmas he brought her to Blackfoot, and soon the two moved to Eagle Rock, where he edited the weekly Idaho Register with Elizabeth on the staff.
He was a booster for Idaho Falls before its name was changed from Eagle Rock in 1891. During those preceding years he was a delegate from Oneida County to the territorial Republican convention in Boise in 1881 When the railroad shops were moved to Pocatello, he objected, but refused to move his newspaper south to Pocatello. Instead he continued to write with optimism about the promise of Eagle Rock, assured of its future for agricultural development. In the summer of 1889, when the town of Eagle Rock was incorporated, Wheeler was named postmaster and served over four years, receiving mail, which residents picked up in his newspaper office.
He datelined his paper “Idaho Falls, Idaho” in January 1891, a few months before the town’s name was legally changed in August. He was a trustee and secretary of the Bingham County Agricultural Association, and helped organize the county fair, which developed into the Southeastern Idaho County Fair. He served on boards and committees for economic development, aiding settlers. As a booster and patriot he organized the celebration for Fourth of July and gave a patriotic speech at the celebration for the beginning of the Great Feeder Canal in 1895. He called the dam and canal “the greatest undertaking in Idaho.”
A leader in education, Wheeler served on the school board and actively assisted schools. At this time (1892) the Central School was built. (It was in the southwest part of the block now known for O. E. Bell Jr. High.) Knowing the importance of the dictionary, he presented a pocket dictionary to each of the six students, who best reported a speech by a local minister, Dr. Jones. He was appointed by the governor to the Albion State Normal School board and to be a trustee of the Industrial Training School in St. Anthony, and traveled for these causes. Edith Lovell in “Captain Bonneville’s County” (1963) wrote: “Wheelers had no children, but over the years quietly sponsored youth projects. Boys from the country lived with the Wheelers to go to school and help out at the newspaper office. Good study habits and church attendance were required of them; the editor’s well-groomed beard, his cane and cutaway coat reminded them of how a gentleman should look.” (CBC 252)
Business was developing with his encouragement to financiers--particularly a group from Chicago, and to home-seekers. He was active in the Club of Commerce and the Elks. Incomes were small, and a subscription to the Register in 1894 was “$3 per year and $1.50 for six months. To those desiring to have it mailed to their friends in the east or out of state, $2.00 per year paid in advance. William E. Wheeler, publisher.” A patriot, Wheeler was commander of the local Joe Hooker Post, GAR for veterans of the Union army. In the meantime his mother had moved back to Idaho Falls, to live in his home for fifteen more years. In 1909 Wheeler, 66, retired and became Justice of the Peace. He sold the Register to his associate publisher, M.. B. Yeaman.
The Idaho Register had lots of competition. When Wheeler died in 1919, three Idaho Falls newspapers appreciatively eulogized him – The Times, The Post and the Register. (They have merged into the Post Register since.) The following excerpt from fellow journalist, Sam Dennis, who established The Times in 1890, not only eulogizes Wheeler but summarizes our local history.
Idaho Falls Times, May 22, 1919: “In writing anything concerning the passing of Wm. E. Wheeler it would be hard to disconnect his name with that of the development of the country. He gave his time and his energy and the best part of his life to the upbuilding of the Upper Snake River Valley. He came to Idaho at an early date; an honest man, a courageous man and a man who never forgot that he was a gentleman. The West in those early days coarsened and roughened many from the East, but never Wm. E. Wheeler.
“Mr. Wheeler came to Idaho with the railroad. He came first to Blackfoot and established the Blackfoot Register. Idaho was then a territory, the whole southeast being one county, old Oneida, which extended from Utah on the south to Montana on the north. His territory extended from the Sawtooth range on the west to Wyoming on the east, and we imagine it was hard pickings for a newspaper in those days. He often made trips either by stage or horseback to Salmon and other small camps to the west rustling for business in order to keep the payroll going. After remaining in Blackfoot three years Mr. Wheeler moved his printing office and whatever personal effects he happened to possess to Idaho Falls, or rather then, Eagle Rock, and called his paper the Idaho Register, the title under which it still exists. The railroad shops were here then and business no doubt was pretty good. However, in ‘86 the company moved its shops to Pocatello with a goodly portion of the town’s dwellings and Eagle Rock for the time being became a deserted western town. However, W. E. Wheeler was not one of the deserters. Time has proven that his faith in the country was well founded and he lived to see what was then a barren waste develop into a great [area rich in] agricultural resources.
“At the time of the departure of the shops from Eagle Rock farming in this country did not amount to very much. Settlers were scarce and things were pretty much in the experimental stage. However, in 1890 a number of enterprising citizens commenced the building of the Idaho canal and a small group of men generally called the “boomers” came to town and among one of their enterprises was the construction of the Great Western canal, now known as the New Sweden property. These two systems of canals provided water for about eighty thousand acres of land and Idaho Falls commenced to reach out for settlers to occupy these lands. At this time W. E. Wheeler commenced his real life work for the upbuilding of the country. He printed columns and columns of booster articles in his paper and he never let up on this work or failed to join in any and every effort made to induce new settlers to come in. He was the author of an article printed in an agricultural magazine at St. Louis which had a large circulation in the middle western states and there are no doubt many citizens here today who were induced to come through the medium of this article. The real estate men of those days carried on an extensive propaganda through the medium of pamphlets and in most instances Mr. Wheeler prepared the copy as well as doing the printing. In short, practically all the matter which has been used in advertising this country either eminated [sic] from his office or was a rehash or enlargement of something that had previously been originated by him.
“One thing which probably did more to encourage agriculture here than anything else in which Mr. Wheeler took a leading part was the organization of a county fair association which gave exhibitions during the middle and latter 80's. A few men formed this association, filed on a piece of government land, built a race track, a grand stand, an agricultural hall, enclosed the whole with a high board fence, and gave county fairs which drew people from an extensive country, because there was nothing of the kind anywhere in the territory for hundreds of miles. That was a big undertaking at that time for the people were few, settlements were scatter[ed] and everybody was poor. But it started Idaho Falls as the center of attraction in this part of the state and she has held the lead ever since.
“Few employers have more cause to be regretted and mourned at death by their former employees than W. E. Wheeler. He was always personally interested in his help, always a loyal friend to them, and he always went a little further than most in looking out for the welfare of those who worked for him. No one knows how far the influence of an honest upright, duty-doing gentleman may extend, but there are many of his former employes now living who know exceedingly well that much of good in their lives came to them through his influence and example.”
Wheeler’s wife, Elizabeth Macy Dougherty Wheeler, also lived to be 96, and died 7 April, 1946, having lived in Idaho Falls for about 62 years.
Resources used: www.familysearch.org (International Genealogical Index) Idaho Register, 21 May 1918 Idaho Register, 16 May 1919; 20 May 1919 www.rootsweb.com/~ilcivilw/county/winnebago Idaho Falls Times 22 May 1919 Lovell, Edith Haroldsen. Captain Bonneville’s County. Idaho Falls, Idaho, 1963 Post Register 8 April 1946 Census: Wyoming Territory; 1880 U. S. Federal (indexed on FamilySearch.org; microfilm at Idaho Falls Family History Center) Fritzen, Mary Jane. Sesquicentennial Memories. Idaho Falls, Idaho, 1997 Idaho Register, issues April and May 1891; 18 June, 1909; 24 Aug 1909 Idaho Falls Daily Post. 18 May 1919