John Russell Wheeler (1816-1881), the grandfather of J. Russell Wheeler, first settled in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, where he was employed at the bank owned by the Rockwell brothers, Le Grand and Lester R. His wife, who had died before he left New York state leaving him with a nine-year-old son, John Edward (1850-1917), was a sister of the Rockwells. A third Rockwell brother, John S., was considered to be the founder of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, where he and Lester erected a mill.
In 1861, John Russell Wheeler left the Rockwell Brothers Bank at Elkhorn and moved to Columbus to establish the Union Bank as a private bank. Two years later, Samuel Marshall and Charles F. Ilsley, both Milwaukee bankers, seem to have owned stock also. In 1873, the Union Bank of Columbus was sold to Wheeler's brother-in-law, Lester R. Rockwell, who managed it until his death in 1884, when it came under the management of his son, Ruggles S. Rockwell.
After selling the Columbus bank, John Russell Wheeler and his son, John Edward, went to Colorado to engage in banking and ranching, and it was in Colorado Springs that J. Russell Wheeler was born. However, the family returned to Wisconsin some years later and John Edward became manager of the La Crosse Power Company. In 1896, he repurchased the Union Bank of Columbus, founded by his father, renamed it the Farmers' and Merchants' Union Bank of Columbus, and established his son, J. Russell, as cashier and manager. The bank was incorporated in 1903 as a state bank, and after the death of John Edward Wheeler in 1917, J. Russell Wheeler became president, the capital stock was doubled, and a number of relatives and customers became stockholders.
J. Russell Wheeler was particularly interested in the development and improvement of agriculture in Wisconsin, knowing that his bank would profit from a prosperous rural economy. He was a stockholder and director of the Rib Lake Lumber Company and the Wisconsin Farm Land Company; and in 1900 was one of the organizers of the Columbus Canning Company, and its successor, the Columbus Foods Corporation. As a director, he helped to effect the merger of the foods corporation with Stokely-Van Camp, Inc. in 1946. Always active in banking and agriculture organizations, he served as president of the Wisconsin Bankers Association in 1916 and 1917. It was he who commissioned noted Chicago architect Louis Sullivan to design the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank Building in Columbus in 1919, the only Sullivan-designed building in Wisconsin.
In 1924 J. Russell Wheeler left the Columbus bank and moved to Milwaukee to become vice president, and later president, of the Bankers Joint Land Bank, from which he resigned in 1927 due to ill health and discord between the directors and the Federal Farm Loan board. The remainder of his life was spent as an investment counselor in Chicago and Milwaukee.
J. Russell Wheeler was married to Anne May Knutesen of La Crosse in 1897. They had three children: John E., Helen A., and Mary Alice. John E. carried on the family tradition of handling finances and became an investment broker in Chicago and California. The father and son had frequent correspondence concerning the investment of stocks and bonds, right up to the time of J. Russell Wheeler's death in 1966.
