| Denver, Colorado 1901 History |
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July 2003 |
1901 History |
Last updated on 06/08/2003 |
Page 682
Ebenezer T. Wells, former Judge
of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Colorado and of the State
of Colorado, was born in the town of Richland, Oswego county,
N.Y., May 15, 1835. His father was a merchant and the son
of Rev. William Wells of Brattleboro, Vt., who was an eminent
clergyman of the Unitarian faith and who settled at Brattleboro
soon after the close of the war of the Revolution.
Judge Wells’ father removed with his family to Henry county,
Ills., in 1838, where the subject of this sketch spent his boyhood.
Entering Knox College, young Wells was graduated there in
1854, and then began the study of law. Admitted to the bar
in March, 1856, he located at Rock Island, Ills., and was there
engaged in the practice of his profession until the outbreak of
the Civil War.
Judge Wells saw much hard service throughout that war. Commissioned
a Lieutenant in the Eighty-Ninth Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry,
he was soon promoted Captain in the same organization. Later,
he was appointed by the President an Assistant Adjutant General,
and his last year of service was as Assistant Adjutant General
to the Third Division of the Fourteenth army Corps and the Sixth
Division of the Cavalry Corps, in the Army of the Cumberland.
Judge Wells came to Colorado in the autumn of 1865, and located
in Gilpin county where he followed his profession until March
1, 1871, when he was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of the
Territory; a position in which he ably served four years. Upon
Colorado’s admission to the Union in 1876, he was elected
to the Supreme Bench of the State, but resigned before the expiration
of the first year of his term. Additional particulars of
his service on the Supreme bench appear elsewhere in this volume.
Judge wells was a member of the Territorial Legislative Assembly
in the winter of 1866-67, and framed the revision of the territorial
statutes known as the "Revised Statutes of 1868." Elected
a member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1876, he bore
a prominent part in framing the fundamental law of our State.
He has also been twice chosen as one of Colorado’s
Presidential Electors.
Upon his retirement from the Supreme Bench, Judge Wells became
a citizen of Denver and has since been, as he now is, actively
engaged in the practice of his profession. In politics he
was long a Republican, but in recent years his convictions have
led him to affiliation with the Democratic party.
