Samuel C. Wheeler, Sandusky Attorney

 

When Samuel C. Wheeler died at age 79 on February 21, 1908, he was the oldest member of the Erie County Bar Association. For many years, he practiced law in the Cooke Block in downtown Sandusky.

Before the Civil War, Mr. Wheeler was a member of Bay City Guards, a local militia company. During the Civil War, he enlisted in Company E of the 7^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and he rose to the rank of Sergeant. 

On the occasion of Mr. Wheeler’s seventy-seventh birthday, several of his friends had a celebration. Cyrus B. Winters gave a speech, and a special poster was presented to him. On a large piece of cardboard was a picture of Samuel C. Wheeler and on each side of the poster was a numeral seven, made from the tags of Battle Ax plug tobacco.  

Mr. Wheeler suffered an injury when he fell on the icy sidewalk as he left his office two months prior to his death, and his health failed after the accident. Funeral services were held at his home on Madison Street in Sandusky, under the auspices of Science Lodge, No. 50, F. & A.M. He was buried in Oakland Cemetery. In an obituary which appeared in the February 22, 1908 issue of the Sandusky Register, it was reported that no man “was better known throughout the city and county than he was.”

Dr. McMeens Inducted into Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame

Dr. Robert R. McMeens, who served in both the Mexican War and the Civil War, was inducted into the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame during a ceremony in Columbus on Thursday, November 2.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1820, Dr. McMeens received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1841, and migrated to Tiffin, Ohio shortly thereafter. He settled in Sandusky in 1849. During his medical practice in Sandusky, he treated many of the victims of the several cholera outbreaks that struck the city (in 1849, 1852, and 1854). (A report he wrote on cholera for the Ohio State Medical Society in 1857 is excerpted in Peeke's book, A Standard History of Erie County, Ohio, available in the library.)

As a soldier, Dr. McMeens served as a surgeon in the Mexican War of 1846-48. Back in Sandusky, in 1851, he founded and commanded the Bay City Guards, a local militia. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, Dr. McMeens returned to active duty, again as a surgeon, in the Third Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He died while serving at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky on October 30, 1862. The Firelands Pioneer of January 1888 quoted a letter written by a fellow surgeon on the day after Dr. McMeens' death: "He has fallen while nobly working at his post; although suffering greatly from disease, he refused to abandon his work, and performed several important surgical operations only a few hours before his death."

Sandusky resident Dr. Robert Bartholomew, who was instrumental in garnering this recognition for Dr. McMeens, accepted the award in Dr. McMeens' honor at the induction ceremony.

Bay City Guards

. . . No, not the Scottish pop band from the 1970s (that was the Bay City Rollers). . . .

The Bay City Guards were a volunteer infantry militia formed in Sandusky in the mid-nineteenth century. Led by a Sandusky physician, Captain R.R. McMeens, the Guards were organized in the Fall of 1851, with 62 men serving as original members. A retrospective article about the Bay City Guards in the July 23, 1875 Sandusky Register stated that the members of the guard were all native-born American citizens; the Sandusky Yager Rifle Company, another militia formed at about the same time, consisted exclusively of German-born American citizens. Also operating at that time was a company called the Sandusky Artillery. It is not clear exactly when these militias disbanded, but the same Register article mentioned above noted that the Yager Company was the only group still in existence at the outbreak of the Civil War.

The Sandusky Library Archives Research Center holds a "petit ledger" that was opened on March 13, 1854 to record financial transactions for each member (the last transaction looks to have been in 1857). It appears that the men paid dues, from which they received payments for expenses. The page shown above records the transactions of John Holland, who was a sign painter by profession, and who was the last surviving member of the Bay City Guards before his death in 1924 at age 99. Here is his photograph from the W.A. Bishop portrait collection, circa 1900.


Now that you have seen the preserved records of a military veteran, why not help to record and preserve the history of our veterans today? The Veterans History Project needs your help. This project, sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted locally by the Sandusky Library and the Ohio Veterans Home, seeks to record the stories of living veterans through oral history. We need your help, to interview veterans and record their stories for future generations. It's not difficult -- and will even be fun and rewarding! You can record your conversations with veterans on your own, or you can make arrangements to use the facilities provided at the Ohio Veterans Home. Your contribution will help to preserve the stories of our veterans for future generations. For more information, contact the Sandusky Library or the Ohio Veterans Home.