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Heber Manning Wells
| Name: Heber Manning Wells |
| Aliases: None |
| Date of Birth:
1859 |
| Location of
Birth: Salt Lake City, Utah |
| Occupation: Governor
of Utah |
| Relations: Theresa
Clawson (Spouse, died in 1897), Emily Katz (Spouse), seven
children. |
| Affiliations: None |
| Date of Death: 1938 |
| Cause of
Death: Stroke |
| Location of
Death: Salt Lake City, Utah |
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Heber Manning Wells was
born in 1859 in Salt Lake City, Utah to Martha G. Harris and Daniel H.
Wells. He attended public schools and was later educated at the University
of Deseret.
Before entering
politics, Wells made
his living as a tax collector in Salt Lake City.
In 1892 he ran for mayor of Salt Lake City, losing to Robert N. Baskin.
Four years later he won the Republican nomination for governor of Utah,
becoming the first person to hold that office.
In 1880, Wells married
Mary Elizabeth Beatie, who later died eight years later. Wells second
marriage, to Theresa Clawson in 1892, ended similarly when Clawson passed
away in 1897. Finally, in 1901, Wells married Emily Katz whom he remained
married to until his death in 1938. All told, Wells fathered seven
children.
When his political life
came to an end, Wells managed the Utah Savings & Trust for several
years and later became the assistant treasurer of the U.S. Shipping Board
Fleet Corporation before eventually retiring. Keeping busy in retirement,
Wells wrote editorials for the Deseret News before dying in Salt Lake City
of a stroke in 1938.
It is said that Butch
Cassidy sent word to Governor Wells through Salt Lake City attorney
Orlando W. Powers in an attempt to go
straight. While skeptical at first,
Wells eventually agreed to a meeting. Due to a series of miscommunication
the meeting never took place and Cassidy returned to a life of crime.
Matt Warner owed his
freedom to the Governor Wells assistance. Upon being released from the
Utah State Penitentiary on January 21, 1900 after serving time for
manslaughter, Warner was immediately arrested again for the same crime. At
his original trial over the Coleman
Affair, Warner was only tried for the
deaths of one of the two men whose lives were lost. His arrest outside the
penitentiary was for the second man. Uintah County District Attorney
Samuel A. King and Warden Dow of the Utah State Penitentiary successfully
petitioned Governor Wells to free Warner. As a return favor to the
governor, Warner went in search of Butch Cassidy in an attempt to
resurrect the opportunity for Cassidy to go straight. Warner was called
back, and the offer withdrawn, when Cassidy participated in the Tipton,
Wyoming train robbery.
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