His parents	Married 5/08/1797	Her parents
5GGF Joel Wells	VT -> NY -> OH -> IL	5GGM Mary Edwards-Wells
Ancestor 186 (10111110) 8/01/1775 - 9/03/1838	Their ancestral child	Ancestor 187 (10111111) 2/09/1778 - 12/04/1846

Joel and Mary Wells were a true frontier family, always advancing westward with the growing United States. “After they were married, Joel worked as a surveyor in Athens (Windham Co.) VT. They moved to Buffalo, NY, were burned out there in 1813 and went to Cincinnati, Ohio. In
1818 they moved to Gallatin Co. (Shawneetown) [IL].” ¹ Buffalo was only a small trading town in the 1810’s. This is speculation on my part, but maybe Joel was drawn there by the prospect of the Erie Canal. It was in the surveying and preparation phases when the Wells moved there. Cincinatti was also still a small new town at the time, just starting to grow due to steamship trade on the Ohio River.

Along the way, they had ten children, two of whom died in childhood. Zerviah * (1798), Joel, Asenath, James “Levi”, Huntington, and Ira (1810, d. 1813) were born in Guilford, VT.

Mary Ann (1813, d. 1820) was born in Buffalo, NY.

Lucinda (Ingram, 1816) was born in Cincinatti, OH.

Ira Rush (1820) and Mary Nims (1823) were born in Gallatin County, southeastern IL.

The family moved once more across Illinois, from the Kentucky border to the Iowa border, in the late 1820s. This newspaper article mentions them as the first Euro-Americans in the area:

“In January, 1829, a hardy little group of pioneers, Joel Wells, his two sons, Levi and Huntington, and Michael C. Bartlett 1Should be Michael R. Bartlett (whom I believe married a Wells), came to this area and liked what they saw. A few Indian tepees were scattered along the broad banks of the Mississippi River. There were plenty of fish, game, nuts, berries and honey, and the Indians were friendly, so the visitors decided to stay. They were the first White men to settle in what became known as Moline (Illinois). They would be followed by other hardy pioneers.” ²

Another article gives more information: “Among the first white families here, the most numerous were the Wells brothers, their sons and sons-in-law. They came between 1827 and 1829. Joel Wells settled near Hampton; Joel Wells, Sr. and Levi and Huntington Wells farmed in what is now Moline; Michael C. Bartlett, a son-in-law of Joel, Sr., settled at what is now approximately the boundary between Rock Island and Moline.” ³ Joel was one of the founders of Rock Island County, IL, and served as its first treasurer.

In 1832, Joel Sr. and many other Wells men enlisted in the Black Hawk War against the Sauk / Fox tribes. This short war ended US / native American hostilities in the “Northwest Territory” east of the Mississippi.

Joel and Mary are buried in Riverside Cemetery, Moline, IL. Some sources describe their location as “Old Riverside Cemetery”. Mary’s FindAGrave profile indicates that their tombstone is “embedded in tree roots”, though it appears very clearly in photographs.