Captain Wilson thought a lot of the Colony scheme. He was to have given his fortune at death to the first male child born on the Colony section. That honor fell to Alfred Wilson Mollineaux, first son of John Mollineaux, born 1874. While conversing with Alfred Mollineaux a few days ago, he said to me, “But since I didn’t get me ‘eritage I’ve dropped the Wilson part of it. Wot would be the good to bother with it now?”
The Mollineaux heirs are the only descendents of the originals holding an interest in section twenty-five in recent years. Alfred now owns the south 80 of the northwest quarter. Harry sold the north 80 two years ago to Otto Krack. Otto paid $6,000 for it, including the growing crop. The old house on the place, built more than a half century ago, is the original John Mollineaux home. The other lands in the section have long since passed to new owners.
There are now only two of the old Colonists living. William Wessel, familiarly called “Teddy,” came over in 1873. He is 89, and lives with his daughter, Mrs. John Chase, in Goff. William Conover lives with his son Edward, on a farm adjacent to the old Colony section. He is 89.
I took a drive about the old Colony section a few days ago seeking to refresh my memory and gather additional data for this article. At Goff I found Teddy Wessel in the Sourk drug store. Still living over the broken dreams of the past, Teddy exploded, first-off, “They were a bunch of damned rascals.”
In course of the interview I asked Teddy if he knew anything about a racy romance at Llewellyn Castle many years ago. “I should say I do,” he said. He had a momentary flash of it. That was all. Then his mind began to fag. Laboriously, tantalizingly, the tired feelers of his mind went fumbling into the dark pool of the past, trying desperately to capture the lost details, but the whole works went under—ebbed away like a fadeout in a movie.
George Sourk, who was sitting by and coaching the old fellow a bit, said, “You’ll have to give daddy a little time, John. He’ll remember it all right.”
Daddy swam up out of it all right and sure enough recollections were upon him with a bang. But the main topic was still submerged and in its place was an ugly memory that should have been dead long ago. “They were damned rascals,” is all he said.
It is assumed that my very fine old friend’s poisoned arrow was aimed only at the shades of the original six, or, at most, only those who had the actual management of the Colony affairs.
Teddy Wessel’s run of hard luck started before he left London. It seems he bought something—or thought he paid for something—he didn’t get. But Teddy can thank his stars that there was at least one crooked countryman in his close circle. Teddy trusted a friend to purchase first-class passagenfor himself and family. The friend bought cheaper tickets on a slower ship, and pocketed the difference. The fast ship passed the slower one in mid-ocean and was lost, together with all on board, when one day out from New York.
A happy—and I believe equitable—solution of the matter would allow the reader who had a friend or relative among them the privilege of exempting such one, and thus still leave Teddy some targets for his arrows. For my own part, I think I should like to exempt that little nineteen-year-old boy, John Stowell. In later years, after he had come to Wetmore and engaged in business, I worked for John Stowell in his lumber yard, and in his brick manufacturing plant, and finally, as type-setter on his newspaper. He was not a crook.