Andrew Carpenter Wheeler

Background

Andrew Carpenter Wheeler was born in New York City, the son of Andrew C. Wheeler, member of the New York state legislature (1835 - 36). The date of the son's birth is given also as July 4, 1835 and as July 4, 1832.

Education

He was educated in the New York City schools.

Career

In 1857 entered journalism as a member of the staff of the New York Times. The following year, however, in the midst of the Kansas troubles, he was smitten with the Western fever, and for the next year or two lived the life of a pioneer in Kansas and Iowa. During this period he received $100 for a play which toured various western towns. Arriving in Milwaukee in 1859, he became local editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel, a position which he retained for three years. There he was in the habit of enlivening things by playing reckless practical jokes, as when on one occasion he so ridiculed a prize poem that the author challenged him, and then he avoided the duel by suggesting absurd weapons ranging from ice-cream freezers to rolling pins. During the Civil War he served as war correspondent, then engaged in newspaper work in Chicago for two years before returning to New York City. His first engagement after returning to New York was on the New York Leader, for which he wrote dramatic criticism under the name "Trinculo. " From the Leader he went as dramatic and musical critic to the World, where his weekly essays signed with his most famous pseudonym, "Nym Crinkle, " attracted wide attention for their caustic humor and wide information. When Wheeler passed from the World to the Sun he continued to use this signature. While still on the Milwaukee Sentinel, he had written a history of the city, The Chronicles of Milwaukee (1861), and in 1876 he published The Iron Trail, a western travel sketch. He contributed to periodicals, and wrote or collaborated upon several plays and melodramas, from which he derived considerable income. His play, The Twins, produced by Lester Wallack, is an adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. Other titles belonging to this period are The Toltec Cup (1890) and The Primrose Path of Dalliance (1892). Six or eight years before his death Wheeler withdrew from active journalism and retired to his farm, "Monsey, " in Rockland County, N. Y. The break with the urban past was complete. Hiding his identity under the new pseudonym of "J. P. M. " - later expanded to "J. P. Mowbray" - he sent to the Evening Post a series of vaguely autobiographical letters descriptive of a search for peace and new inspiration in nature, which were later collected and published as A Journey to Nature (1901). Other books by "J. P. Mowbray" followed: The Making of a Country Home (1901), Tangled Up in Beulah Land (1902), and The Conquering of Kate (1903). In his later years he was increasingly prone to reflection on religious themes. He once took to the lecture platform to combat the ideas of Robert Ingersoll, and at the time of his death was working with his friend Edgar M. Bacon on a study of "saddle-bag" Methodist preachers of the Southwest, later published as Nation Builders (1905).

Achievements

• For many years he was one of the foremost representatives of a class of American newspaper men that is fast disappearing. In the school of letters to which he belonged, individuality of thought, aggressiveness and vigor of expression were the qualities most cultivated and most admired. Mr. Wheeler possessed these qualities in the highest degree

Works

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  • The Iron Trail. a Sketch

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • The Chronicles of Milwaukee;

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Conquering of Kate

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The iron trail: A sketch
  • The Making of a Country Home

Interests

• Besides his critical interest in music and the drama, Wheeler was himself an amateur song-writer, painter, and musician, and had made some study of law, medicine, and theology.

Connections

He was married twice. He had three children.

Father:

Andrew C. Wheeler