JAMES H. WELLS was born on a farm in Clark county, Indiana, May 31, 1834. July 8, 1852, he was married near Salisbury, Sangamon county, to Miss Margaret J. Sackett, he lived on a farm in Menard county, until the spring of 1853, when he moved on a farm two miles south of Salisbury, where he lived four years then lived on a farm in the same neighborhood until 1860, when he bought a farm of eighty acres in sections twenty-seven, thirty-three, thirty-four and thirty-five, where he still resides. He now owns a farm of one thousand acres of fine land under a high state of cultivation. Mr. Wells began a poor boy, but by hard work and close application to business has gained a position he may well be proud of. He and wife have had a family of six children, five living, viz: Levi M., Harriett E., Harry R., Lelia and Richard Wells. James H. died when seven years of age. Mrs. J. H. Wells was born in Illinois, she was a daughter of Thomas Sackett and Polly Sackett. J. H. Wells was a son of James Wells and Balinda (Owens) Wells, the former born in Kentucky, the latter in Indiana. They had a family of five children and both parents died when Mr. J. H. Wells was a child. In Politics Mr. Wells is a Democrat, and cast his first vote for Buchanan for President of the United States.