John Washington Steele was born in Sheakleyville, Pennsylvania in 1843.

In 1864, soon after wealth came to him through inheritance from the McClintocks' oil, the orphan John Steele left the farm which he had inherited from his foster or adoptive family, the McClintocks, and began a lavish and picturesque life, rapidly spending his way through his fortune.

He shuffled around, moving to the Mid-West, eventually becoming a railroad station agent.

[5] According to his autobiography, written in 1901, after his fall he was hounded by the public and the press and became a recluse to avoid them.

He died of pneumonia in Fort Crook, Nebraska, December 31, 1920.