Early Life and Career
Wheaton was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Dr. Francis Levison and Amelia S. Wheaton née Burrill. Dr. Francis Levison Wheaton graduated from Brown University in 1828 and served as a surgeon in the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War and as surgeon general of Rhode Island.
Frank Wheaton attended Brown University, studying civil engineering, but withdrew in 1850 at the age of seventeen to take a position with Mexican-American Boundary Commission, where he worked for the next five years. On March 3, 1855, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Cavalry and assigned to duty on the Indian frontier on the Missouri and Kansas Border. He participated in the campaign against the Cheyenne Indians and also in the Utah War and was promoted to captain on March 1, 1861.
On February 5, 1857, he married Sarah Maria Cooper (August 4, 1836 – December 15, 1858) and had one child, Sarah Maria Cooper Wheaton, in 1858. His wife died shortly thereafter. Wheaton remarried on November 2, 1861, to Emma Twiggs Mason (October 17, 1836 – February 16, 1864), born at Fort Des Moines, Wisconsin Territory, who, like his first wife, was a descendant of George Mason. She died in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.
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