Name John Wells | ||
John Moon Wells was an American farmer from Prairieville (now called Waukesha), Wisconsin who spent a single one-year term in 1849 as a Free Soil Party member of the Wisconsin State Assembly from Waukesha County.
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Background
Wells arrived in Waukesha County in 1837, and served as the first public school teacher in the village's tamarack log schoolhouse, during the winter of 1837-1838, with a student body of between 25 and 30 children.
He was a member of the local Congregational Church (built in 1839), and participated in an ecumenical evangelical group known locally as "The Prairieville Breaking Team" which went around to the neighboring schoolhouses and villages to hold prayer meetings, and whose enthusiasm was deemed almost Methodist in its pious fervor.
Politics
In 1841, he had served as the secretary of the Prairieville Democrats when they held a meeting on July 6 in preparation for the upcoming September territorial general election.
On September 26, 1848, he served as a delegate from Waukesha County to the Wisconsin's 1st congressional district convention of the newly organized Free Soil Party, which nominated Charles Durkee for Congress. He also served in other Free Soil leadership positions during that period.
He was elected to the Assembly in 1848 as a Free Soiler, succeeding Democrat Chauncey G. Heath.
He would be succeeded by Democrat John E. Gallagher.
Agricultural Society
In March 1849, when the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society was organized, Wells was elected as a member of the executive committee. He was also a member of the committee which drafted a constitution for that body.