Bela Wellman [SEP] place of death
Fruitvale, California, on 31 January 1887. The Bela Wellman memorial grove was established in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in 1944.
Bela Wellman
Bela Wellman (December 17, 1819 – January 31, 1887) was a California Gold Rush merchant who formed the wholesale grocery firm of Wellman, Peck and Company.
Early years.
Bela was the tenth of eleven children of Lot Wellman and the third born to his second wife, Rebecca (Cole) Wellman. Lot was a cooper and a great-great-grandson of Puritan Thomas Wellman, who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony about 1640.
Bela left home at age 12 to work