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(NEW YORK CITY--BROOKLYN.) John Dunlap Wells. Diaries of a distinguished Presbyterian pastor, with a letter from Theodore Roosevelt. 261, 323, 207 manuscript diary pages, plus extensive logs of sermons and a necrology at the rear of each volume. Large thick 4to, original 1/2 calf, rebacked and worn; only minor wear to contents; many dozens of letters and pieces of ephemera laid in or tipped in. Various places, 1842 and 1889-1902
John Dunlap Wells (1815-1903) graduated from New York's Union College and the Princeton Theological Seminary, and spent most of his life as pastor of South Third Street Presbyterian Church in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. By the time of these diaries, his son Newell Woolsey Welles supported him there as junior pastor. He was active in missionary causes, including the New York State Colonization Society which (at this point) raised funds for Liberia. On 9 January 1890, a church he had recently helped dedicate collapsed, "crushing a two-story wooden house in which were seven persons. A young girl about 16 years old, a member of that church, and her brother 14 yrs old in the Sunday School were killed, and all were wounded." He sometimes discusses the rougher-edged Brooklynites who fell under his pastoral care, such as unmarried pregnant women who needed to be wed in a hurry; on 16 September 1894 "attended the funeral of Mr. Roe who said just before his death 'I am a good man, I have never done any wrong,' and yet he was a policy man & his place had been raided by the police. I made no allusion to him but tried to comfort the sorrowing." On the other end of the spectrum, he pays a visit to the home of famed anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock in Summit, NJ on 25 January 1896. Wells celebrated fifty years at South Third in January 1900.
The Reverend's daughter Louisa Wells married a Brooklyn sugar magnate, James Howell Post, and the Reverend spent most of each summer at their estate in Brookhaven, Long Island. There he indulged in suburban delights such as lawn care, built a 30-foot observatory in July 1890, and frequently preached at local churches. On 18 August 1895 he officiated at a funeral at the nearby Poospatuck Reservation of the Unkechaugi band: "I went with Mr. Bisbie to the Indian & Negro settlement near Mastic to attend a funeral. We found on reaching the place that it was the funeral of a Negro man, a husband & father who was drowned while returning with a companion (both drunk) from a gathering of some kind where he had played the violin. . . . The father & brother of the drowned man had been drinking heavily & a cousin fell asleep as soon as he sat down, and though I shook him, he could not be roused."
The Rev. Wells was a cousin of the Roosevelt family, particularly New York politician Clinton Roosevelt (1804-1898), who was a second cousin to Theodore Roosevelt. The relationship of Wells to Theodore Roosevelt is unclear, but tipped into the diary is a 17 November 1898 Theodore Roosevelt Letter Signed on letterhead of the Republican State Committee: "Hearty thanks. Your letter has been a genuine pleasure to me." Also included is a lone letter written by John Dunlap Wells to his cousin Minerva Dunlap from the Princeton Seminary, 11 January 1842. Provenance: found among the papers of great-granddaughter Dorothy Post Jones Hubert.
