December, 2023
Lincoln — Looking recently into the family tree, I came across the name Abel McClellan Wimer, born 1869, son of John Elias Wimer (1837-1907) and his wife Sarah Margaret Moyers (1847-1937). They lived in Otoe County, Nebraska, in the 1880s and later homesteaded around Dalton in the Nebraska panhandle. John Elias Wimer was a former Confederate soldier, a member of a horse artillery unit of the 7th Virginia Cavalry. He is a first cousin of mine, four generations removed, through his Zicafoose mother.
So why did he name his first born son with Sarah Moyers, also from a Confederate family, after a Union general, George McClellan?
The connection could possibly have been through his first wife, Jemima Lamb, daughter of Noah W. Lamb. She had died in 1867; her father was a Union supporter, at least by the end of the war.
Noah Lamb is also my cousin, three generations removed, through his Simmons mother. I first came across him in an April, 1865, letter from Union Captain John Boggs to the West Virginia governor asking for the governor's help in returning several head of Noah Lamb's horses to him after they had been stolen by the Elza gang, known as the Dixie Boys. Boggs attested to Lamb's character and loyalty to the Union.
This is ironic, because Lamb on his Simmons side descended from slaveowners, while Wimer on his Zicafoose side did not.
Which is not to say Lamb's whole family was loyalist. Noah Lamb's son, who bore his father's name, apparently joined the Confederate army, if his 1924 obituary is to be believed. The obituary cites, in the overblown 'lost cause' language of the time, the son's gallantry as a Confederate cavalryman in the Shenandoah Valley. Civil War records show a Noah Lamb serving in the 58th Virginia Infantry, which fought there.
After the war, young Noah married Susannah Wimer, sister of John Elias Wimer, and moved to Coffey County, Kansas. His neighbor there was Peter John Wimer, another Wimer sibling. Susannah died in Kansas in 1871. Noah moved back to West Virginia and married Mary Ann Zicafoose. Peter moved back to Virginia after being in legal trouble and died in 1908 in a poorhouse in Rockingham County. John Elias Wimer eventually left Nebraska for Louisiana and then California, where he is buried with a marker indicating his service to the Confederacy.
Little of this explains the naming of Abel McClellan Wimer (1869-1904). It could have been a gesture somehow to heal family rifts and to move on from the war. It could have been out of bitterness towards Abraham Lincoln (McClellan ran against Lincoln for president in 1864). It could have been for something McClellan did early in the war, such as exchanging and freeing captured Confederates from Pendleton County. It could have been simply in the tradition of the time to name babies after famous people; a later son was named after Grover Cleveland.
It's an unsolved mystery; maybe something will turn up that explains the unusual naming.
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| Abel McClellan Wimer (1869-1904) |
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Correction: In a previous version of this post, the elder Noah Lamb was identified as having served in the Union Army. That is likely to have been another person of the same name. Addition: a reader of this blog from West Virginia writes that other childen of the time were also named after McClellan, as a way to show disapproval of Lincoln.
