Judges Joseph Wheeler Sr. and Jr.

Judge Joseph  F. Wheeler, Jr. – Probate Judge 

Obituary Joseph Wheeler Jr.

Ironton Register, Thursday, October 23, 1851

He died in Burlington on the 19th inst., Joseph F. Wheeler, Esq., in the 28th year of his age.  Mr. Wheeler is well known to have been one of our most promising young men.  He persevered with untiring energy in pursuing those practical principles of law which form the body of sound legal knowledge and attained gratifying success in the practice of his profession.  His strict integrity won him the confidence of his fellow citizens, who had just placed him in the responsible office of Probate Judge. 

Being happy in his domestic relations, he was eminently fond of home with all its endorsements, where conjugal and paternal love called forth the strongest sympathies of his nature, not to the exclusion of those social qualities that enlivened the social circle.  He leaves a wife and two children to mourn his decease. 

But they have the sympathies of neighbors and friends and the precious promise that God is a father to the fatherless and the widow’s God.  “He departed with resignation and a hope of future felicity.  This inevitable providence of God is taking away one whose fair character and adequate qualifications promised great usefulness, reflecting that “man’s goings are of the Lord: how can a man then understand his own way.”  

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Ironton Register, Thursday, July 25, 1861

Judge Joseph Wheeler, for forty-two years one of the most prominent citizens of Lawrence county, died at his residence in Ironton, after a short illness, on Friday last—July 19, 1861—in his 73rd year.

Judge Wheeler was born in Rutland, Worcester county, Massachusetts, on August 23, 1788.  He received a good education in his native town. 

For a time, just after his majority, he lived near Boston.  During the war of 1812, he was twice a volunteer in his country’s service; and was for a time at Erie, Pennsylvania.

Soon after the war, he came to our neighboring town of Portsmouth, Scioto county, where he engaged in teaching, was a very successful teacher, and built “Wheeler’s Academy.”  For a time, Sam Seaton, Esq., of Greensburg, Kentucky, was his assistant in this Academy. 

He was the first chorister of the Presbyterian Church in Portsmouth.  In March 1818, he married Miss ________ Stretton, just below the Scioto, who died the next December.  In 1823, he was again married to Miss _________ Wheeler, who survives him.

In 1819, he removed to Lawrence county, becoming Clerk of the Court, which he held until 1847, twenty-eight years.  During the first ten or twelve years of his residence in this county, at Burlington, the County Seat until 1852, the population was small.

He held (by appointment, we believe) more or less, the offices of Auditor, Treasurer, and Recorder—at one time, we have heard it said, he held them all. 

At any rate, he was the county in the public business, as he was afterward, by his influence, the  Whig party.  When the County Seat was removed from Burlington to Ironton in 1852, he took up his residence there.  His son, J. F. Wheeler, Esq., was elected Judge of Probate in October 1851 but died in a few days.

By appointment, the father became the Judge of Probate, was elected by the people for the unexpired term the next October and held the office, altogether, the full term of three years, until February 1855.  This was his last office.  He was admitted to the Bar at about 67 and practiced law until his death.

Judge Wheeler was always one of our best and most public-spirited citizens.  As a neighbor, he was remarkably kind and obliging; he cared much for the sick and afflicted, and no man would do more to favor a friend.  He had a strong will, was industrious, energetic, and of remarkable exactness in his business transactions—too exact to obtain and hold popular favor. 

He had his own notions of “right” and would bring others to his standard—the error, after all, if any, being on the side of correctness, far better than if one on the side of looseness. 

In all his public duties, it is not too much to say that the sternest integrity guided him. It is universally acknowledged that he looked much more closely at the people’s interests than at his own interests. 

His chief fault was intolerance for the opinions of others; thoroughly honest in his own convictions and feeling that he was right, he would defend his belief in the face of the world, and sometimes, perhaps, without sufficient regard for the opinions of others, who might be just as honest in belief as himself. 

He was always a friend and active supporter of education and the community’s best interests.  In religious faith, he gave assent to the Presbyterian doctrine and generally attended that worship, but he was never a member of any church.  He was the father of Masonry in this county and was buried with Masonic honors, at Burlington, on the day after his death.  In the fullness of years, he has fallen, and long will the people of Lawrence county respect the memory of Joseph Wheeler.

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Ironton Register, Thursday, January 22, 1857 – Death of Daughter

Died January 19th, in this town (Ironton), of consumption, Miss Emeline Putnam Wheeler, daughter of Judge Joseph and Urania Wheeler, in her 18th year.  Burial at Burlington, Ohio.

See the Obituary of Hon. Charles W. McCoy – Ironton Register, December 15, 1904. It states that in 1858, Hon. Charles W. McCoy married Miss Urania Wheeler, daughter of Judge Wheeler.