Boardinghouse Guests: Captain Wells, a Carolina Hero
One of the earliest entries in Julia Wolfe’s Old Kentucky Home guest register, from September 1906, is the name Ed Wells, Jr. of Charleston, S.C. Edward Lawrence Wells was born the youngest of five children to a prominent Charleston family August 7, 1886. Like Thomas Wolfe, his father was almost age 50 when he was born, also a northerner, who had come to live in the south. Edward Sr. had been a merchant in New York and settled in South Carolina after 1860. He quickly came to embrace the Southern cause for independence. During the Civil War he served as a Captain with the Charleston Light Dragoons, 4th South Carolina Calvary. After the war he married a local woman and worked as a successful cotton merchant. In his later years he became a recognized writer of fiction and nonfiction.
Edward Jr. enjoyed growing up on the waterfront of a busy city in an affluent family. He was a popular member of the Carolina Yacht Club. He was afforded a good education and wished to follow the family military tradition. He attended the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, Virginia, where he graduated about 1907 in a time of peace, so he returned to his home in Charleston. His stay in Asheville at the Old Kentucky Home may have been a short vacation from school, or a stop on his way home. Surely a young Thomas Wolfe admired this sharp young cadet. Wolfe later wrote of Eugene Gant “With a tender smile of love for his dear self, he saw himself wearing the eagles of a colonel on his gallant young shoulders.”
In the 1910 Census, Ed Wells, Jr. was living at home and employed as an engineer with the steam railroad. He joined the National Guard which led to a short period of service on the Mexican border in 1916, and he was assigned as an engineer with the Charleston Light Dragoons. His father died in early 1917. In August 1917, despite his own advancing age, at the First Officers Training Camp at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga. he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant of Calvary. After training in Tennessee, he was assigned to the 2nd Machine Gun Battalion, 1st Division. The following month as part of the American Expeditionary Force he sailed for Liverpool, England, and then on to France.
After almost a year in Europe, Edward was promoted to First Lieutenant on September 6, 1918. He was already a seasoned veteran from action on the frontline in the trenches. He was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross cited for heroism in action near Buzancy, France, July 21, 1918. On October 4, 1918 waiting promotion to the rank of Captain, he was severely wounded during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive near Exermont, France. Wells had volunteered for a mission to lead a platoon of infantry into the town where the streets were heavily armed with enemy machine gun nests. Taken to the rear, he died of his wounds on October 10, 1918. Posthumously he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for extraordinary heroism in the action near Exermont and the rank of Captain. He was interred at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial at Lorraine, France., and a memorial placed in the Magnolia Cemetery at Charleston.
Family papers are found at: https://schistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Wells-Edward-L.-papers-1111.00-1.pdf
