William Vincent Wells

Background

William Vincent Wells was born in Boston, the son of Samuel Adams Wells.

Education

He received but slight formal education and at an early age went to sea.

Career

For a decade he lived adventurously, visiting many parts of the world, suffering shipwreck five times and rising before the age of twenty to be an officer in the merchant service. He became a member of the Boston and California Joint Stock Mining and Trading Company and in January 1849 sailed as first mate from Boston on the Edward Everett. In California he commanded the company's Pioneer on what is sometimes erroneously mentioned as the first steamship voyage up the Sacramento River. Upon the break-up of the company soon afterward he mined for two seasons on the Stanislaus and Tuolumne rivers and then spent short periods working as a farmer and as an engineer. Returning to San Francisco, he engaged first in business but about 1853 became a member of the editorial staff of the Commercial Advertiser. In the summer of 1854 he sailed as agent of the Honduras Mining and Trading Company to explore the gold-bearing regions in the almost unmapped wilds of eastern Honduras. The record of these seven months of colorful journeying is preserved in his Explorations and Adventures in Honduras (1857) and in an article "Adventurers in the Gold Fields of Central America, " in Harper's Magazine (February 1856). Soon after his return to San Francisco in 1855 he received the appointment as consul for Honduras, an office he held most of the time until 1874. He compiled in about a fortnight Walker's Expedition to Nicaragua (1856), a highly partisan defense of the filibuster's régime. At this time he turned more definitely to journalism, being associated with the Alta California and later with the Daily Times. He made an expedition to the wilder parts of Oregon which he reported in "Wild Life in Oregon" (Harper's, October 1856). In 1858 he joined in the Frazer River gold rush. By the sixties he had risen to prominence in San Francisco. He had again returned to the editorial staff of the powerful Alta California, had gained reputation from his books, and had taken a leading part in the Republican campaign of 1860. During the Civil War he held the position of cashier and impost clerk in the naval office in San Francisco. During the period of governmental employment he found leisure to work upon his three-volume Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865). For this biography of his great-grandfather, he was able to obtain a large number of records preserved in the family, so that his work remains a basic one. In 1865 he accepted an appointment under Emperor Maximilian. He was in Mexico for a short time and conceived a warm-hearted attachment to the imperial régime. He also escaped from official duties long enough to make an "Ascent of Popocatepetl" (Harper's, November 1865, and a series of articles in Overland Monthly, July-September 1868). He was soon sent to New York City to conduct a bureau aimed to spread throughout the United States propaganda favorable to the empire. He obtained certain concessions in Mexico that promised to make him rich, but the fall of Maximilian put a sudden end to these hopes, and he was forced to return to San Francisco, ill and almost penniless. He was again received upon the staff of the Daily Times, but in 1869 he accepted the easier post of clerk for the mayor of the city. With constantly failing strength, he held this appointment until 1874. From this time on, his mind began to be affected, and finally in January 1876 he was admitted to the state asylum for the insane at Napa, where he shortly afterwards died, survived by his widow.

Achievements

• He was famous foe his three-volume work Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865).

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams

    (The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams is an unchan...)

Personality

In his character he combined love of adventure, conviviality, warmth of friendship, and natural gentility and refinement of manner. He was always a partisan, whether defending his great-grandfather, the Empress Carlotta, the filibusters, or the golden opportunities of Honduras. Although unfortunate in a biographer, these qualities endeared him to his contemporaries.

Connections

He was married.

Father:

Samuel Adams Wells