Remembering 1858: The Wellington Indicted

This is the second in a series of posts that will feature the label text from a small exhibit currently on display in Wellington’s downtown, commemorating the capture and rescue of John Price on September 13, 1858. A photo of the display can be seen here.

Eli Boies
Eli Boies was born in Massachusetts in 1800, making him fifty-eight years old at the time of the Rescue. He emigrated to Ohio in 1842 and practiced medicine with Dr. Daniel Johns, the man credited with bringing the railroad to Wellington in 1850. Boies was also the proprietor of the short-lived Wellington Journal (1852) with his friend, merchant John Reed. Both men were dedicated members of the abolitionist Free Congregational Church.

Boies is mentioned in one only instance in the transcripts of the Rescue trials. Justice of the Peace William Howk testified that he “heard Doctor Boies advising [the crowd outside the hotel] to quiet.” Boies was one of four Wellington men who served time in the county jail, twenty-one days in total. He was released on $500 bail. His wife, Lydia, later wrote a letter about her life in Wellington, in which she noted, “[T]he Fugitive Slave Law was enacted, which awakened great indignation, and also sympathy for the fleeing slave, who found no rest or safty until safe in Canada, though destitute of every thing…”

Eli Boies served in multiple public offices, including being appointed village supervisor while he was completing his jail term. He died in 1863 and is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery. He is the only Wellington rescuer for whom a studio portrait is known to survive, and also appears in the famous 1859 jail yard portrait.

Robert L. Cummings
Little is known about Robert Cummings. He is mentioned in only one instance in the transcripts of the Rescue trials. James Bonney, an employee of Wadsworth’s hotel, testified that around 4PM, he was approached “in the hall up the first flight of stairs” by school teacher Charles Langston and “Cummins,” who offered him $5 to get the key to the locked front door of the hall. Bonney refused.

Cummings is notable mainly for his absences. He was the only Wellington rescuer not to enter a plea at the December 1858 arraignment hearings; he did not appear for the first time in the Cleveland courtroom until the following spring. He was also the only indicted man from Wellington/Pittsfield who did not attend the so-called “Felon’s Feast” in Oberlin, in January 1859. Cummings was one of four Wellington men who pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) on May 6, 1859. He was ordered to pay $20 plus court costs, and serve one day in jail. He spent the night in a Cleveland hotel.

Matthew DeWolf
Matthew DeWolf was born in Massachusetts in 1792. He and his family emigrated to Ohio in 1827. (DeWolf’s sister, Pamelia, was married to Abner Loveland, making the two rescuers brothers-in-law.) While his first occupation in Wellington was as a school teacher, DeWolf soon opened a temperance tavern at the center of the village, which also served as its first Congregational Church. An 1834 psalter with his inscription still survives.

On the day of John Price’s abduction, Matthew DeWolf was assisting with battling a large fire in Wellington. Abner Loveland and Loring Wadsworth were standing with him in the town square as events came to a head at Wadsworth’s hotel. The three men urged Constable Barnabas Meacham to enter the building and serve a warrant for kidnapping on the slave catchers holding Price. Meacham was concerned about his financial liability under the terms of the Fugitive Slave Act; if he helped John Price to escape in what was later found to be an unlawful arrest, Meacham could be subject to severe financial penalties and even jail time. Matthew DeWolf’s only recorded action that afternoon was to help circulate an indemnity bond—essentially asking people in the crowd to make pledges against any financial loss Meacham might suffer—but few people were willing to sign.

DeWolf, Loveland and Loring Wadsworth pled nolo contendere (no contest) to the charges against them. All were fined $20 plus court costs and sentenced to one day in jail. The Cleveland Leader published a passionate condemnation of their convictions and noted, “No fugitive from slavery ever went unfed from their hospitable homes,” suggesting the involvement of all three men with the Underground Railroad. Matthew DeWolf died in 1865 and is buried in Pioneer Cemetery.

Matthew Gillett
“Father” Gillett, the most venerated of the Wellington indicted, was born in Connecticut in 1785, making him seventy-two years old at the time of the Rescue. Gillett was a farmer with more than sixty acres producing crops and supporting cattle and sheep herds. His role on the day of John Price’s abduction was relatively minor. Like all of the oldest Wellington rescuers, he never entered Wadsworth’s hotel on September 13^th. Instead, he approached keeper Oliver Wadsworth and encouraged him to allow other people to enter the building, to verify whether John Price was being held legally. When Wadsworth objected that a large group of people would likely damage his facilities, Gillett suggested a smaller delegation and the keeper eventually agreed.

What Gillett became justly famous for was his fortitude. Sent to the country jail with twenty other rescuers on April 15^th, Gillett of all the Wellington men refused to cut a deal with prosecutors to secure his own release. He remained in custody for nearly a month, so long that federal authorities became concerned for his health. It was not until officials threatened to turn him out in the street, and explicitly told him that their focus was on making an example of the men from Oberlin, that Gillett agreed to return home. He left jail on May 13^th and was driven to Wellington in a carriage by a federal marshal.

Gillett seems to have become a beloved figure in Oberlin. He led an Oberlin group that marched in a May 24^th Cleveland rally, holding an American flag inscribed “1776.” He also attended a celebration held in Oberlin for the final rescuers released from jail in July, and he was one of the evening’s featured speakers. He was quoted as saying, in part, “Never made a speech in my life; don’t know how to make a speech, and I ain’t going to make a speech; but I’ll just say that every thing under the heavens that I was taken down to jail for was just for being ketched down at Wellington; and that aint all. I havn’t confessed it all yet. I am ashamed that I didn’t do more than just be ketched down there; and if there is ever another such a time I am going to have more to be accused of, and if other folks are cowards, I’ll rescue the fugitive myself. I used to think Oberlin was a pretty bad kind of a place, but I’ve changed my mind about it now.” Matthew Gillett died in 1863 and is interred in Greenwood Cemetery. He is also immortalized in the famous 1859 jail yard portrait.

Lewis Hunt Hines
Lewis Hines was born in Ohio around 1831, making him twenty-seven years old at the time of the Rescue. A farmer by profession, he married Harriet Elizabeth Wells of Wellington in 1853. The couple had at least three children over the course of their marriage, the eldest of which, Hiram, was just six months old when John Price was captured. Lewis Hines later served as a private in the 23^rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Company C, during the Civil War.

There is a single oblique reference to his possible presence in Wellington in the Rescue testimony. Witness Jacob Wheeler, postmaster of Rochester, testified that he saw a group of men, including one otherwise unnamed “Hines,” enter the attic room where John Price was being held. Lewis Hines appeared in Cleveland for his preliminary arraignment in December 1857, but did not return to face judgement the following spring. He died in 1904 and is buried in Saranac, Michigan.

Abner Loveland
Abner Loveland was born in Massachusetts in 1796, making him sixty-one years old at the time of the Rescue. He had emigrated to Ohio in 1819, but did not settle permanently in Wellington until 1855. He was a farmer, and brother-in-law to fellow rescuer Mathew DeWolf. On September 13^th, Loveland was standing in the center of town with DeWolf and Loring Wadsworth. All three men had been assisting with the fire that raged on South Main Street that morning. Loveland’s only recorded action in connection with day’s other events was to urge Constable Meacham to go into Wadsworth’s hotel and serve a warrant on the slave catchers for kidnapping John Price unlawfully.

On May 12, 1859, a plea of nolo contendere (no contest) was entered for all three men. Their attorney made a lengthy statement about their venerable ages and high status in the community, and their absolute commitment to being law abiding citizens. Loveland later wrote a letter to the editor of a Cleveland newspaper in which he disavowed the entire statement: “I did not intend to authorize my counsel yesterday to give my views on government, to the Court; and disclaim holding to many of the doctrines expressed by him…I am not guilty of violating any law.” Nevertheless, Loveland was sentenced to pay a $20 fine plus court costs, and to serve one day in jail.

Abner Loveland died in 1879. He is buried in Wellington’s Greenwood Cemetery. In 1895, a family genealogy was published which read in part, “He was a firm friend of the bondsman…His house was a well known station on the underground railroad. All trains passing that way stopped there, and the passengers received the needed rest and refreshment and assistance to proceed towards freedom.”

John Mandeville
John Mandeville was a fifty-one-year-old brickmaker in 1858. He was born in New York and in 1843 married Hester Northrup, eventually fathering seven children. The History of Lorain County, Ohio (1879) named him as one of two men who went up a ladder to retrieve John Price from Wadsworth’s hotel, but this claim is not supported by hundreds of pages of testimony offered at the Rescue trials.

In fact, John Mandeville was standing in the crowd outside the hotel, when he was asked by Constable Barnabas Meacham to accompany him up to the garret where Price was imprisoned. William Sciples and Walter Soules were also asked to join the group. Mandeville was “in liquor,” and author Nat Brandt identified him as the man described in testimony as “purty reckless,” taunting the crowds outside by shouting through the garret window. When he pled nolo contendere (no contest) on May 6, 1859, his intoxication was possibly the reason Mandeville reiterated to the court that he was “not guilty in manner and form as he is charged.” He was ordered to pay $20 plus court costs and serve one day in jail. He passed the night in a Cleveland hotel.

John Mandeville moved his family to Penfield after the trials, before permanently settling in Camden Township in 1878. He died in 1900, at ninety-two years old, and is interred in the Camden Cemetery, Kipton.

Henry D. Niles
Henry Niles was thirty-one years old at the time of John Price’s abduction. A lawyer by profession, Niles had five children by his first wife, Lucena Barker, who died shortly after the conclusion of the Rescue trials. He married second wife Elizabeth Phelps in 1862. The couple added two more children to their family. Elizabeth would go on to survive Henry, when he passed away in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1895.

Niles was born in Wellington and was a resident of the village at the time of the 1860 census. His role in the events of September 13^th, 1858 go completely unrecorded in the trial transcripts. He is only mentioned in connection with his own court proceedings. Niles, Robert Cummings, John Mandeville, and Daniel Williams all pled nolo contendere (no contest) on May 6, 1859. They were ordered to pay a $20 fine plus court costs and serve one day in prison. They each spent the night in a Cleveland hotel.

At his death in 1895, the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette published a lengthy obituary in which Niles’s connections to Wellington were detailed. The piece mentioned Niles’s distinguished military service in the Civil War (“Elder Niles was familiarly known in Ohio as Colonel Niles.”), his ordination to the clergy in 1874, and his memberships in the Odd Fellow Society, the G.A.R., and the Freemasons. No mention was made of his involvement in the famous events of 1858. 

William Sciples
Of all the men indicted in connection with the Rescue, perhaps the most enigmatic is William Sciples. Born in New York, he was living in Summit County, Ohio when he married Canadian émigré Laura Ann Elliot in 1843. The couple do not appear to have had any children. Legal documents and census records suggest a fifteen- to twenty-year age difference. They were living and farming in Penfield in the early 1850s.

Sciples was one of three men pulled from the crowd by Constable Barnabas Meacham to accompany him into the hotel on September 13^th, 1858. He spent much of the afternoon running errands on behalf of the slave catchers, and later guarding areas of the hotel against the crowd, at the request of keeper Oliver Wadsworth. At trial, Sciples turned state’s evidence and testified against mixed-race school teacher Charles Langston. Constable Meacham, Justice of the Peace Isaac Bennett, and fellow rescuers Matthew Gillett and Loring Wadsworth each took the stand to testify that they had known Sciples for seven to ten years, and that it was “generally believed he is not a man of truth.” After the proceedings, Sciples seems to have been released without bail, presumably in exchange for his damaging testimony. Langston was convicted.

By the time the 1860 federal census was compiled—just one year after the trial—William and Laura Sciples had relocated to Torrey, New York where he was employed as an innkeeper. Perhaps they wished to allow any public controversy surrounding his role in the Rescue to die down. By 1870, the couple returned to farming in Wellington. A decade later they were living in retirement on Mill Street. Laura Sciples is interred in Greenwood Cemetery in an unmarked grave, her husband presumably at her side.

Walter Soules
Walter Soules’s indictment is also somewhat puzzling. Born in Massachusetts around 1827, Soules was a young farmer with a wife, Phoebe Eliza Stanard, in 1858. The couple had seven children over the course of their marriage. Soules fought for the Union during the Civil War and was later a member of the GAR. The family lived in Wellington for at least a decade, then moved to Lagrange and finally settled in Kansas, where Phoebe died in 1885.

Like Sciples, Soules was asked to leave the crowd and accompany Constable Barnabas Meacham into Wadsworth’s hotel on September 13^th. When the slave catchers presented Meacham with legal documentation to support their imprisonment of John Price, Soules left the hotel. He never appeared again in court after the initial arraignment proceedings in December 1857. Walter Soules died in 1903 and is buried in Colony, Kansas.

Loring Wadsworth
Loring Wadsworth was born in Massachusetts in 1800, making him fifty-eight years old at the time of John Price’s abduction. Wadsworth had emigrated to Ohio at aged twenty-one, walking the entire distance. He and wife Statira Kingsbury built a Greek Revival house that still stands at 222 South Main Street today. A farmer by trade, Wadsworth and his family had hundreds of acres under cultivation south of the village.

On the day of the Rescue, Wadsworth was standing in the village square with brothers-in-law Matthew DeWolf and Abner Loveland, surveying fire damage and clean up. He does not seem to have played any major part in the day’s other events, beyond urging Constable Meacham to enter the hotel—owned and operated by his cousin, Oliver—and serve a warrant on the slave catchers for unlawful kidnapping. After his arraignment, however, Wadsworth found a larger role to fill. He and Matthew DeWolf were named as Wellington representatives to a self-appointed committee for the thirty-seven rescuers, to coordinate their legal and public relations strategies. Wadsworth then found himself in jail for twenty-one days, and was only released on $500 bail. He later pled nolo contendere (no contest) to the charges against him, and was fined an additional $20 plus court costs, and sentenced to an additional night of confinement.

Wadsworth held a number of political offices. He was elected mayor of Wellington on April 4^th, 1859, just days before he began his jail term. He was also a township trustee and village supervisor, often serving alongside other rescuers including Eli Boies, DeWolf, and Loveland. Loring Wadsworth died in 1862. Neither his multiple obituaries in the Lorain County News nor his later mention in Commemorative Biographical Record of the Counties of Huron and Lorain, Ohio (1894) note his participation in the events of 1858. He is preserved for posterity, however, in the famous 1859 jail yard photograph.

Daniel Williams
Daniel Williams was born in Vermont in 1815. After emigrating to Ohio at age fourteen, he eventually became a farmer with substantial land holdings in Pittsfield. The house he erected on Webster Road is still standing today. Later in life, the family relocated to a home on Courtland Avenue, where Daniel died in 1889.

Williams was one of four Wellington men who served time in the county jail, some twenty-one days total; as a consequence, he appears in the famous 1859 jail yard photograph. He was later released on $500 bail. But his actions on the day of the Rescue go unrecorded in hundreds of pages of trial transcripts. He later pled nolo contendere (no contest) to the charges against him, and was ordered to pay a $20 fine plus court costs and spend one additional day in jail. He passed the night in a Cleveland hotel.

When he died, Williams’s obituary in the Wellington Enterprise read in part, “He was public-spirited and encouraged all measures that promised good to the community. He was a man of strong convictions; a Republican, an abolitionist…always advocating principles which have forced their way through great opposition. He was conscientious. A frequent expression with him was, ‘My conscience wouldn’t let me do that.’” Williams is buried beneath an impressive granite obelisk in Greenwood Cemetery.

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