Unless there is duplication, we have 1024 sets of 10th great grandparents. This overwhelming number explains why my 10th great grandfather George Wheeler had obtained so little of my attention until I tried to find something in my database pertaining to "wheels" for this week's story. A close connection to his surname was the best I could come up with, but I enjoyed the opportunity to get to learn more about this forgotten ancestral family. It turns out that the Wheelers were indeed what is colloquially known as "big wheels" in early Concord.
George was born around 1605/06 at Wharley End, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, England. He married Katherine Pinn on 8 June 1630 and had three children born there between 1631 and January of 1636. Fourth child Sarah was born in January 1640 after the family had moved to New England, indicating that the family migrated between those dates with 1638 being most often cited. My 9th great grandmother Ruth Wheeler was born in 1642. In all, George and Katherine had 8 children.
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| Google Earth Map showing Wharley End and Cranfield in Bedfordshire |
Several Wheelers were among the earliest settlers of Concord. It is not clear if they were all related, but it seems likely that at least two of George's brothers, Captain Timothy Wheeler and Captain Thomas Wheeler, migrated to New England at about the same time as George. All settled at Concord, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British Colonial America.
Concord had been so named in 1635, just a couple of years before their arrival, to commemorate the peaceful acquisition of the lands from the Pennacock-Algonquin peoples. However, since about 90% of those peoples had been wiped out by disease brought from Europe, they might have had a far different name than Concord for the resulting English settlement! Perhaps, as has been suggested, Concord was more expressive of the intended harmony among the English settlers themselves.
Concord has many associations in American history relating to the beginning of the American Revolution and for its vibrant literary community including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. But those all came many years after the Wheelers were among its earliest English inhabitants. (Another set of my 10th great grandparents, William and Jazan Hartwell, were also early settlers in Concord; their son Samuel would grow up to marry Ruth Wheeler, daughter of George and Katherine Wheeler.)
George and Timothy Wheeler were close business associates as well as brothers. The men were holders of large parcels of land in Concord and appeared frequently in the early records for serving in official capacities, being included among those considered having integrity and good judgment. Among the properties owned by the brothers was the original part of what is still being run as The Colonial Inn in Concord, Massachusetts. Although the following image is from nearly 300 years after the Wheelers' time, it is certainly evocative of an earlier era:
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| Interior of The Colonial Inn c1922, owned in the 1600s by George Wheeler and his brother Wikimedia Commons Public Domain |
Although not known if any of them were related to George Wheeler or his descendants, the Concord homes pictured below have some affiliation with the Wheeler name:
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| Wheeler-Merriam House, Concord, MA photo by John Phelan |
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| Wheeler House - Concord Academy photo by Daderot This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. |
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| Deacon John Wheeler - Captain Jonas Minot Farmhouse, Concord, MA photo by John Phelan This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. |
Katherine died 6 January 1685 and George followed her on 2 June 1687; both are buried in unmarked graves at the Old Hill Burying Ground in Concord, two of the 32 Wheelers buried there.
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| Old Hill Burying Ground, Concord, MA photo courtesy Suzy&Rob of Findagrave.com |
Some Resources:
- "A Short History of Concord" website located at https://concordma.info/concord-mass-history.html
- Hudson, Alfred Sereno, The History of Concord, Massachusetts, Erudite Press: Concord, Mass., 1904, accessed through Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/historyofconcord01huds/page/n5/mode/2up
- "The Mythical Twelve First Families of Concord", Concord Journal, 16 December 1954 accessed online at https://concordlibrary.org/special-collections/ruth-wheeler-concord-articles/12-16-1954-the-mythical-twelve-first-families-of-concord
- Walcott, Charles H., Concord in the Colonial Period, Estes and Lauriat: Boston, 1884, accessed online through Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/concordincolonia1884walc/page/n1/mode/2up
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