Thompson and Ida
Thompson Luther Wheeler (1855-1920) and Ida Rebecca Rikard Wheeler (1859-1936) were the parents of my paternal grandfather, Ellis Levi Wheeler (1896-1944).
February 15, 2023
My father’s paternal grandparents, Thompson and Ida Rikard Wheeler, around 1915.
Thompson and Ida were descendants of the German-speaking Lutheran immigrants who settled in South Carolina’s Dutch Fork before the American Revolution. Born in the 1850s, Thompson and Ida were children during the Civil War (1861-1877) and came of age during Reconstruction (1865-1877) in South Carolina.
About 1877
Ida and Thompson were married in 1877, when she was eighteen. This photograph may have been taken around that time.
Ida was the daughter of George Albert Rikard (1820-1873) and Eba Elizabeth Kinard (1818-1891).
About 1877
Colorized image of Thompson that may have been taken in his early twenties around the time of his marriage to Ida.
Thompson was the son of Levi Stephen Wheeler (1825-1861) and Frances Caroline Fike Wheeler Werts (1832-1918).
Thompson’s father, Levi Stephen Wheeler (1827-1861), died in December of 1861, when Thompson was about to turn six years old. His mother, Frances Fike Wheeler (1832-1918), soon remarried. This prompted the Wheeler family to take legal steps to ensure that Levi’s land in Stoney Battery Township in Newberry County was passed down to Thompson rather than Frances and her new husband. Thompson’s older brother was apparently estranged from the family, so Thompson was considered Levi’s oldest male heir.
In 1877, Thompson and Ida were married at her parents’ home near Pomaria. They eventually had seven children, the youngest of whom was my grandfather Ellis. Thompson died of complications from diabetes at the age of 64 in 1920. After Ida was widowed, she moved to Columbia, the state capital, to live with her daughter Annie. She died at the age of seventy-seven in 1936.
My father was ten years old in 1936 when he and his sister, Patsy, got to spend a week with Ida, whom he called Granny Wheeler, and Ellis’ sister, Annie, in Columbia.
“I remember so well the summer before Granny Wheeler died. My sister, Patsy, and I spent a week in Columbia visiting with Granny and Annie at 1000 Duke Street. We also visited with some relatives of my Grandmother Brennan. It was a wonderful summer, which I’ll never forget. Uncle Rufus Counts ran the Lutheran Bookstore in Columbia for a long time and Annie was his bookkeeper. I spent all of my time there during that week. There was a reading room in the store and one wall was filled with the most wonderful adventure stories. Annie would come in to get me for lunch and she would have to shake me out of “never-never” land. But, the week ended too soon and Daddy came to take us home. Patsy and I ran out to jump excitedly in the car. When Daddy came out of the house, he asked us if we had kissed Granny goodby; of course, we hadn’t. I remember him sending us back up to the porch to kiss her and chastising us by reminding us that we never knew whether we would see her again. We never saw her again. She died the following December 4, 1936. I’ve never forgotten the lesson.”
Thomas Ellis Wheeler in A Wheeler Family in the Dutchfork, his family history self-published in 1998.