Back to previousHenry Wellcome's childhood
30 October 2008. By Penny Bailey.
Birth
Henry Wellcome was born on 21 August 1853 in a log cabin among the forests around Almond in northern Wisconsin, USA.
During boyhood expeditions to the nearby Indian burial mounds, Wellcome discovered a Neolithic stone arrowhead among the mounds, which sparked in him a lifelong interest in traditional ways of life.
His father, Solomon, was a farmer and in 1861, after the failure of his potato crop, the family moved 300 miles by covered wagon to the town of Garden City, in the newly created state of Minnesota. The journey took several weeks, and they travelled with a large group of other settlers for protection from Indians.
Henry and his brother joined the other pupils in the town’s small log-built schoolhouse. They also learnt to ride and shoot in the surrounding prairies and woodlands, and explored the lakes and rivers of Blue Earth County by canoe.
The drugstore
Solomon Wellcome’s brother, Jacob, a physician, had set up his medical practice and a drug and general store business in Garden City. When Henry was 13 he left school and worked in his uncle’s store.
There among mortars, pestles, spatulas, scales, bottles and jars of chemical compounds, Henry’s interest in medicine and medical research was born. Part of his job was to compound medicine from his uncle’s prescriptions - and he experimented with his own compounds too. He also accompanied his uncle on his rounds, watching as he splinted fractures or dressed wounds.
The Sioux
In the 1860s, the Midwest was still frontier country, and Garden City lay in the vast hunting plains of the Dakota and Winnebago Indians. In August 1862, just after the Wellcomes had arrived to put down roots there, the Sioux Indians lashed out against the settlers on their former hunting grounds. Led by chief Little Crow, they tried to massacre or drive out the western migrants.
The towns were transformed into small fortresses defended by volunteers and troops. During the attack on Garden City, the young Henry led a group of children melting lead and casting rifle bullets for the settlers. He also helped his uncle in caring for the wounded - receiving an early introduction to emergency surgery.
The uprising ended in an Indian defeat and the public hanging of 38 Sioux Indian chiefs. Reeling from their losses, the citizens of Garden City bayed for more Indian blood, with the word ‘extermination’ appearing more than once in the newspapers.
Young as he was, Wellcome recognized that the Indians had been shamefully treated, and in later years he devoted substantial portion of his time and fortune to Father Duncan’s mission to the American Indians.
Religion and temperance
The Wellcome family was deeply religious. Wellcome’s father Solomon, two of his uncles, and his brother George became ministers of the Second Adventist Church - an evangelical faith predicting the end of the world. His mother, Mary, was the daughter of a devout Quaker family.
The temperance movement that gripped America from the 1840s onwards coincided with the Adventist movement, and in Garden City, Wellcome’s father and uncles were frequent speakers on the theme at churches and meeting halls along the river.
His family instilled in him a hard work ethic and the importance of self-control - even moderate drinking was prohibited. Wellcome held these principles to heart all his life, and carried them to his employees in England, Africa, Asia and the USA.