Charles Augustus Wheaton - Minnesota (1860-1882)

Minnesota (1860-1882)

Wheaton suffered after the death of his wife Ellen in 1858. His friends the Norths wrote from Minnesota in 1859, urging him to join them in Northfield, which they had founded. The following year, Wheaton moved there with many of his 12 children, joining other Syracuse families who had migrated to join the North family. When John North had earlier suffered financial failure in the Panic of 1857, Wheaton purchased his interests in the local flour mill and other properties—an act that may have economically saved the town. For some time, Wheaton’s Northfield Mills produced “choice family flour.”

After his second marriage in 1861, Wheaton and his large family first took over the second floor of the American House Hotel, built by John North in 1857. (The hotel became the first building of Northfield College, later renamed Carleton College.) The family built a new house of Greek Revival style at 405 Washington Street, where they moved in 1868. The house was divided and moved in 1938. Both portions of the original house still stand in Northfield. The main house is about five blocks south of its original location and the “L” portion is on 9th Street West.

In 1864 Wheaton sold the flour mill to members of the Jesse Ames family. Ames and the Archibalds perfected flour milling processes that produced what was recognized as the best flour in the nation with higher yields at the mills. The Ames Mill was the basis of the Malt-O-Meal company.

In 1866, Wheaton was elected to the House of the Minnesota State Legislature, where he served one term, from 1867-1968. That same year, Wheaton and Charles M. Goodsell each gave a 10-acre (40,000 m2) plot of land to the fledgling Northfield College to establish the college campus just north of the main part of town.

Wheaton later became editor of the Northfield Standard newspaper and later the Rice County Journal, long considered one of the first and finest weekly newspapers published in the Midwest in the 1800s. He regularly wrote a column, “Sunday’s Doings,” that reviewed the sermons of local ministers. He also reported on congregations, noting the attendance (or lack) of prominent church members. To prepare his column, Wheaton visited up to three local churches on any given Sunday.

When Wheaton died in 1882 at the age of 72, the bank and businesses of Northfield closed for the funeral as a sign of respect. A tribute of the time read, “In Northfield his editorial pen was ever at the disposal of any good cause, and he was a leader in all progressive causes.”