Wells Spicer
American judge (1831–1887)
Wells W. Spicer (1831–1885 or 1887) was an American journalist, prospector, politician, lawyer and judge whose legal career immersed him in two significant events in frontier history: the Mountain Meadows massacre in the Utah Territory in 1857; and the 1881 shootout commonly known as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. After he left Tombstone, he returned to prospecting. He disappeared in 1885 or 1887.
Early life
Spicer was born in Chemung, New York to William and Seba Spicer, both farmers of Presbyterian faith. He had two siblings: an older brother, George; and a younger sister, also named Seba. The family relocated to Tipton, Iowa when Wells was about nine years old. As a young man, Spicer worked as a clerk for Samuel Augustus Bissell, a respected lawyer and judge. Under Bissell's tutelage, Spicer was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1853. In the same year, Spicer and his associates began publishing the Cedar County Advertiser; Spicer became the sole publisher and editor the following year, eventually selling his successful newspaper four years later. After unsuccessfully running as a Democrat for county prosecutor in 1854, Spicer became a Republican and won the race for county judge in 1856.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7981698. VIAF identifies the subject as 76238506. The Library of Congress control number is nr99028814. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1831, 1885, 1887 and 1857.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wells Spicer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.