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The genealogist Henry M. Wheeler was born in Worcester and lived
most
of his life in central Massachusetts. He studied at both Amherst
College
and Brown University, but did not graduate from either
institution. As
a young man he worked as a clerk of the courts in Worcester County
and
eventually became an assistant secretary of the State Mutual Life
Insurance
Association, a position he held for over twenty years. Wheeler was
a member
of many Worcester organizations. He was president of both the
Y.M.C.A
and the W.M.C.A, was active in the city's Central Congregational
Church,
and was a member of the Worcester Society of Antiquities.(1)
After his retirement from the insurance business, Wheeler pursued
his
interests in local history and genealogy. In 1898 he published his
Genealogy
of Some of the Descendants of Obadiah Wheeler of Concord and
Thomas Thaxter
of Hingham. Wheeler conducted much of the research for this
publication
at the American Antiquarian Society and his annotated version of
the book,
as well as a copy he filled with original photographs, are
preserved at
the Society.(2) He published several papers on the history of
Worcester
in the proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquities
including "Recollections
of Two New England Houses Built by the Reverend Joseph
Wheeler,"
(1904) and "Lincoln Square, Worcester, Massachusetts,"
(1905).
Although Wheeler was never elected to membership in the American
Antiquarian
Society, he regularly donated material to its library starting in
1867.
He gave early town histories, religious material documenting
missions
in Massachusetts, dozens of early pamphlets relating to Worcester,
and
copies of his own essays.(3)
This profile portrait of Wheeler was painted by his nephew
Charles Avery
Aiken.(4) Charles Avery Aiken studied at the School of the Museum
of Fine
Arts in Boston and had a successful career as a painter and
printmaker
in Massachusetts and New York, maintaining studios in New York
City and
in Wellesley.(5) In the 1920s and 1930s, he exhibited his work at
the
Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and at New York's
National
Academy of Design. This portrait of his uncle was painted when
Aiken was
a young man, and may have been based on an 1896 photograph of
Wheeler
showing the antiquarian in profile surrounded by books and
papers.(6)
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1) 'Henry M. Wheeler Dies in Wellesley,' Worcester Evening
Gazette, September
9, 1917, American Antiquarian Society Newsclipping File; and Henry
M.
Wheeler, Genealogy of Some of the Descendants of Obadiah Wheeler
of Concord
and Thomas Thaxter of Hingham (Worcester: Franklin P. Rice, 1898),
20-21,
35.
2) Henry Martyn Wheeler Genealogical Papers 1898-1899,
American Antiquarian
Society Manuscript Collection.
3) See Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society from
October 1867
to October 1916. Often the gift listings are vague. For example in
April
of 1869, Wheeler is noted as giving, 'Twenty-two college
pamphlets,' and
in October of 1900 he donated, 'Ten Worcester pamphlets of early
date.'
4) Aiken was born in Georgia, Vermont, the only son of
Wheeler's sister Henrietta
and her husband the Reverend John Francis Aiken. Wheeler,
Genealogy of
Some of the Descendants of Obadiah Wheeler,35.
5) Who's Who in American Art 1938-1939 (Washington, D.C.:
American Federation
of Arts, 1937): 13-14; and Dorothy B. Gilbert, ed., Who's Who in
American
Art 1953 (New York, R. R. Bowker Co., 1953), 5.
6 ) The 1896 photograph, which shows Wheeler seated in
his study at 82 Park
Avenue in Worcester, is housed in the American Antiquarian
Society's photograph
collection of Worcester residents.
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