The Broken Wing: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Challenging”

Final Wing Brother Struggled and Failed at Reinvention

Samuel Campbell Wing: 1849-1908 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)

 

While Samuel C. Wing never lived up to the infamy of his three murderous brothers, he also failed to live up to the achievements and respect his eldest brother Edward earned. (See previous blog post, "Full House") Instead, Samuel struggled to find his place in the world, trying to reinvent himself several times. His challenging life ended in despair and self-destruction.

Samuel Wing was the fourth child and third of the six sons of Samuel Morrison Wing and his wife Emily Weir. He was born in Owensboro, Kentucky on January 1, 1849, and attended college and law school at some point. In 1870, the census shows he was working as a dry goods merchant in Owensboro. The following year on November 22, 1871, he married Martha Cary Hopkins. He was twenty-two. Samuel and Martha’s first child, Lucie, was born September 2, 1872.

Marriage Record for Samuel and Martha Nov 22, 1871.

In 1875, Samuel was appointed postmaster in Owensboro, just as his second child, Elizabeth, was born.

That year seems to be the point when his life began to spiral out of control. Over the next few years, he faced the loss of several loved ones. First, his little daughter Elizabeth died in 1875 at the tender age of three months. He and his wife Martha had another child, a son named Edward Rumsey Wing after Samuel’s eldest brother, in 1876. However, Martha died just three years later in April 1879 at age thirty-one. I haven’t found a cause of death-- perhaps a miscarriage or other birth complication led to death, or some illness. Samuel’s little son Edward died just a year later. In addition, Samuel’s brother Edward died in 1874, and his sister Emma died in 1876. So many losses must have sent Samuel reeling.

Death of Martha Wing, 1879

He managed to complete his legal training just months after his wife’s death. A brief notice in the Owensboro Messenger on December 10, 1879 noted that “the Circuit Court has granted S.C. Wing a licenses to practice law, and he was sworn in this morning.” The article went on to note that Samuel was still acting as postmaster, and it was unknown how much time he could devote to the law.

That seems to indicate that Samuel was a widower with two essentially full-time jobs while he was trying to raise his one surviving child, a daughter.  He apparently felt unable to care for little Lucie, turning her over to his wife’s family to raise. Lucie appears in the 1880 census in the household of her aunt Lucy Reeve and her husband in Henderson, Kentucky. She remained with them until her marriage.

Lucy Wing in 1880 census living with her aunt Lucy Reeve

By the time of the 1880 census, Samuel was living in Louisville with his brother Charles, sister-in-law Annie and their child Emma. The brothers were law partners. The partnership and living arrangements gave Samuel a front-row seat as his brother Charles descended into alcoholism. I wonder if Samuel chose to live with Charles in a vain effort to care for him, or if Samuel’s own personal despair made him unable to live on his own.

While the 1881 Louisville City Directory still shows the brothers practicing law, their partnership had crumbled, and Samuel had left the area, moving to Boulder County, Colorado at some point in 1880. It is easy to understand why he wanted a new start. Samuel’s brothers were spiraling out of control, with three of them becoming murderers in the early 1880s, bringing the family negative press. A news article tried to tar Samuel with the same brush as his murderer brothers, even confusing him with his brother William and claiming he had killed a man. A local columnist defended Samuel in the Owensboro newspaper, writing:

“Sam Wing was born and raised in Owensboro, and was a modest, unassuming boy. When grown he entered the dry goods business with a Mr. Peters, and a few years after married Miss Mat. Hopkins of Henderson. He was postmaster here for several years, and is now mining in Gunnison, Colorado.”

I found it interesting that Samuel’s foray into the law was completely ignored in this short piece. He seems to have abandoned his legal practice when he moved west. The mining endeavor seems to have been unsuccessful, despite the following September 1880 news article in the Owensboro newspaper:

By 1885, Samuel was living in Denver. Government records show he received pay of $900.00 per annum as a postal clerk in Denver. He also worked in real estate, according to the Denver city directory entry for 1891 (see below).

At some point, Samuel switched careers yet again, becoming a representative for the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. He also relocated again, even further west, ending up in Salt Lake City Utah by the early 1900s. He continued his real estate activities as well, representing East Coast investors in a bid to acquire a downtown block to construct an office building. He also participated in politics, and was appointed secretary of the Utah Republican Convention in 1905. 

Samuel also remarried in 1904. His bride was a young woman from Mississippi who frequently visited family in Utah. Mary Lowe Manning was 27 when she wed 55-year-old Samuel on June 21, 1904. The couple had a little daughter, Dorothy, who was born May 19, 1906.

Just a few years into this second marriage, something in Samuel’s life led him to despair. On March 26, 1908 he purchased a handgun and shot himself in a hallway in a downtown Salt Lake City office building. Newspaper articles speculated about his motivation. The Ogden newspaper suggested he was in financial difficulties, stating:

“Mr. Wing had invested heavily in several mining properties and it is believed that this, with other business reverses, caused his death.”

Ogden Weekly Sun Headline, March 31, 1908

The Salt Lake Herald had a different theory, stating that:

“…it is believed that he resolved upon self destruction to avoid infirmities which had fastened upon him during the past winter and of which there was little hope of cure. Friends of Mr. Wing say that he learned from his physician that he was suffering from Bright’s disease and that he may have killed himself so as to leave his family well provided for and to spare them the expense of the decline which seemed imminent. This belief is based upon the fact that Mr. Wing apparently had no financial or domestic worries.”

Bright’s Disease was a bit of a catch-all term during the early 1900s for several types of kidney disease, including end-stage nephritis, so Samuel may have been convinced he would suffer a slow, miserable death. However, given that his widow was forced to let out rooms after his death, and then returned to her birthplace of Mississippi with their daughter, where she promptly remarried, I believe the Ogden newspaper’s suggestion of financial problems certainly contributed to his despair.

The articles both noted that he seemed in good spirits the day of his death, chatting with friends and business associates, and even getting a shave at the barbershop, where he jokingly instructed the barber to shave him “fit for a wedding or a funeral.”  He had obviously planned his suicide with great care, buying the gun days earlier and preparing letters of instruction to officials on funeral arrangements, and a letter for his wife saying goodbye.

The Herald article also included some surprising details about Samuel’s purported past. A friend from Owensboro, Kentucky who also moved to Salt Lake City, claimed that when Samuel’s term of office as postmaster “expired in 1881, he went to San Francisco, where he entered the insurance business. He was afterwards in Portland and in Spokane and finally came to Salt Lake where he entered the field for Mutual Life, meeting with marked success here. Later he took up real estate and mining. Few men had more friends in Salt Lake than he.”

This account ignores Samuel’s abortive law career, and his fifteen years in Denver where he worked in mining, as a postal clerk and in real estate. If he truly spent time in San Francisco, Portland and Spokane, in was during the late 1890s, when he reinvented himself as an insurance agent.

The article also shockingly claimed that Samuel had three living daughters, while records only show two. The article identified little Dorothy, age 18 months, and Lucie, now married to banking executive named Emery Clark. But it also listed a Miss Macelle Wing, a daughter from a “former marriage” who worked as a nurse at the Latter-Day Sants hospital. I was finally able to locate a Marcelle, not Macelle, Wing in a few Utah records, but wasn’t able to find her mother’s name. Marcelle wasn’t born to Samuel and first wife Martha, as Martha’s obituary lists only Lucie and her brother as the surviving children. Did Samuel have an additional wife between Martha and Mary? Or was Marcelle born out of wedlock in Colorado?

The few records I have found for Marcelle Wing give her a birthdate of July 10, 1886 and a birthplace of Colorado. Samuel was living in Denver then, which would correspond with Marcelle’s birthdate. Marcelle appears on the Utah census in 1910 working as a nurse as stated in the Herald article. In 1912, she married a George Reinmund. I will continue to investigate her parentage.

Samuel Campbell Wing had a challenging life, losing so many family members in a short period of time, and being forced to deal with his siblings’ criminal records. He seems to have been a restless man, moving further and further westward, changing careers every few years in an endless attempt to recreate himself. Perhaps his lifelong struggles finally overwhelmed him in March 1908, leading him to kill himself at the age of sixty-one.

Samuel is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City. His grave is alone; his children and widow all left Salt Lake City a few years after his suicide.

 

 

Sources:

Samuel Wing licensed to practice law. Owensboro Messenger and Examiner. Dec. 10, 1879. Accessed through Newspapers.com.

Defense of the Wing Family. Owensboro Messenger. Apr. 10, 1883. Accessed through Newspapers.com.

Findagrave entry for Samuel C Wing. https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/81812584/person/262560612134/facts

“Samuel C Wing Shoots Himself.” Salt Lake Herald. March 27, 1908 issue. Salt Lake City, Utah. Accessed through Newspapers.com.

"Insurance Agent Blows Out Brains", Ogden Weekly Sun, March 28, 1908. Ogden, Utah. Accessed through Newspapers.com