Nathaniel Wheeler

Sarah De Forest was descended from a Huguenot family, of Avesnes, France, some of whose members fled to Leyden, Holland, to escape persecution.

[1] His son Nathaniel, after receiving a common school education, learned the trade, first taking up the ornamental part of the work.

At the age of twenty-one he took charge of the whole establishment, to relieve his father, who had been carrying on a farm at the same time.

He conducted the business successfully for about five years, and then began the manufacture of metallic articles, especially buckles and slides, using hand labor at first, but gradually introducing machinery.

In 1848 he formed a partnership with Messrs. Warren & Woodruff, manufacturers of the same kind of articles, and the firm erected a building for the business, of which Nathaniel Wheeler took entire charge.

Nathaniel Wheeler was made general manager on the organization of the company, and in 1855 was elected president, retaining his old office.

[4] Nathaniel Wheeler was married twice: first, at Watertown, November 7, 1842, to Huldah Bradley, who bore him four children and died in 1857, leaving a son, Samuel, and a daughter, Ellen B., wife of Edward Harral; second, to Mary E. Crissey, who bore him four sons, two of whom, Archer and William Bishop, with their mother, survived.