I was wondering if anyone on this list could identify the Parson Wells listed
in a Friday, November 28, 1890, edition of the "Big Stone Gap News."
The article is as follows:
SENATOR MILLS AND PARSON WELLS
(The Boom at the Gap Likely to Drive the Aged Parson to the Wilderness)
"I consider Mr. Wells the greatest natural orator in the State of
Virginia," said Senator Mills "His power over the class of people among whom he
works is simply marvelous. I have seen whole congregations weeping or
shouting, plunged in sorrow or carried out of themselves by his eloquence. He can
sway them as he pleases. Within five minutes after he begins his sermons he has
his congregation entirely under his control. He numbers among his friends
some of the finest men in the State. I have known them to come miles to hear
him, and to be as much affected by his words as the simple mountaineers
themselves. I frankly confess that he can make me cry whenever he chooses, and I am
not sentimentally inclined. If he had been an educated man there is nothing he
might not have accomplished. As it is, he has buried himself in the mountains
and toiled for no return.
"Of course, the mountaineers idolize him; no other man can hold his
place. His private character is absolutely above reproach. There isn't a
person in the world who can breathe a word against him. He has simply worked and
sacrificed himself for others, and, in a worldly sense, he stands to-day
exactly where he stood when he began. He has a little home - nothing more."
The old orator of the mountains will not have even his little home
much longer. The modern boom has struck the region. Coal and iron have been
discovered in the mountains, and the camps and miners stand in what was a year
ago unbroken wilderness. The mountains that once echoed only howls of wolves
and the halloos of mountaineers now throw back the shrieks of the engines of the
South Atlantic & Ohio trains sweep daily through the gorges. At East Stone
Gap, too, near the old minister's home, there is an abnormal activity. On the
site of his birthplace, and less than a quarter of a mile where he now lives,
there is to be erected, a magnificent new Baptist academy. On the other side
of him an immense hotel is to be built, while if the East Stone Gap
Improvement Company carry out their plans he is in danger of being bounded on right and
left by factories and boiler works.
-------------------------------------------------------
This is really a nice tribute to Parson Wells and I believe there are clues
as to which Wells ancestor is referred to here, however I don't know which one.
If a Wells ancestor sold land to the East Stone Gap Imporvement Company,
does anyone know who it was?
Judy