His companies, which were the predecessors of American Express and Wells Fargo, competed with the United States Post Office by carrying mail at less than the government rate.

Henry Wells was born in 1805 in Thetford, Vermont, the son of Dorothea "Dorothy" (Randall) and Shipley Wells, a Presbyterian minister at what is now the First Presbyterian Church of Seneca Falls, New York who moved his family to central New York State in the westward migration of Yankees out of New England.

In his adult life, he was also called as Henry "Stuttering" Wells and was known as a flamboyant character.

In the express business they competed with the United States Post Office by carrying mail at less than the government rate.

[7] Popular support, roused by the example of the penny post in England, was on the side of the expressmen, and the government was compelled to reduce its rates in 1845[8] and again in 1851.

When Crawford Livingston died in 1847, another of his brothers entered the firm, which became Wells & Company.

(However, Livingston, Wells & Company continued to operate under that firm name in England, France and Germany.

[5] About the time the company was formed, he relocated in Aurora, New York, which remained his home for the rest of his life.

They had four children:[18] After his first wife's death on October 13, 1859, in Albany, New York, he married Mary Prentice of Boston in 1861.

[5] Wells died in Glasgow, Scotland, on December 10, 1878, two days short of his 73rd birthday.