John Hankins Wallace and Ellen Wallace Veech

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Husband John Hankins Wallace ^{1 2}

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           Born: 16 Aug 1822 - Allegheny Co, PA 2
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

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         Father: Robert Wallace (Abt 1784-      ) 3 4
         Mother: Elizabeth Hankins (1790-1829) 4 5

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       Marriage: 3 May 1893 6

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   Other Spouse: Ellen J. E. Ewing (1819-1891) 7 8 9 10 - 2 Oct 1845 10

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Wife Ellen Wallace Veech ⁶

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           Born: 31 Dec 1845 6
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

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         Father: Hon. James Veech (1808-1879) 1 11 12 13
         Mother: Maria Ewing (1811-Aft 1882) 7 8 14

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Children

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• They had no children.

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General Notes: Husband - John Hankins Wallace

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He was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and reared on his father's farm. In early boyhood he developed a great fondness for books and study, and never was especially delighted with the drudgeries of farm life, except with domestic animals, especially the horse. At the age of seventeen he was a successful teacher in the home school. He pursued the usual course of classical studies at Frankfort Springs Academy for some three years, but his health broke down and he never graduated. In October, 1845, he married and the next spring they settled on a farm in Iowa, in the neighborhood of Muscatine. After shaking with the ague for some fifteen months, he removed to Muscatine, sold the farm at a handsome advance, and commenced merchandizing, at which he was not a success. Meantime he was elected secretary of the Iowa State Agricultural Society, and his first care was to lift it out of its incipiency and secure legislative recognition and support, making it really a State institution. In this position he was eminently successful, for it opened up a wide field for the breeding and development of domestic animals. All the improved breeds of domestic animals could be classified and traced except horses. The trotting-horse was then reaching a good degree of popularity, and everybody was of the opinion that this trotting speed must come from the runner, for there was no other source from which speed could come. Here was a problem for the secretary to solve, and he took hold of it in earnest, travelling thousands of miles and devoting years of time to its solution. He collected and classified all the trotting statistics of this continent, with the blood elements, so far as could be authenticated, of each performer, and this material made the first volume of Wallace's "American Trotting Register," published in 1871. The second volume followed in 1874, and was continued at intervals till he had published nine volumes of this work. In 1875 he established in New York a new magazine, entitled Wallace's Monthly, which he continued until 1891. Having thus successfully established his own channel of communication with the public, he went forward aggressively in support of his purpose to make the American trotting-horse a distinctive breed. His expositions of the influence of the law of heredity on all animal life\emdash physically, mentally, and, it might be added, morally\emdash was never seriously controverted, and the old axiom, "Like begets like," was triumphantly verified in ten thousand instances. At the foundation of this idea, that has revolutionized the whole industry in this country and in Europe, is the dominant fact that the horse is far more than a mere machine. He possesses a type of mentality that we seek to explain by the words instinct or will. This mentality is a matter of inheritance, and its strength or weakness in a certain direction is to be determined by the strength or weakness of his inheritance in that direction, other things being equal. Not many years ago we went abroad for all our improved breeds of domestic animals, but of late practically every country in Europe is coming here for American trotting-bred trotters, confessedly the best that the world has produced, and this is the resultant of a sound idea persistently developed. In 1891 Mr. Wallace sold out his establishment, for a handsome sum, to a syndicate in Chicago, including all rights to his publications, numbering some thirty-odd volumes. After a few months employed in a futile effort to change the teachings of the Monthly, it was found that nobody wanted it and it was discontinued, and thus it died a humiliating death in the hands of incompetents. In concluding this condensed episode it maybe noted that there were two distinguishing traits in his character\emdash
namely, whenever he saw a fraud he was ready to hit it, and his uncompromising hostility to gambling in any and every form.

He married his second wife and after spending two years mostly in travelling, they settled down to a quiet life in New York.

1 —, Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1893), Pg 44.

2 John H. Wallace, Genealogy of the Wallace Family (New York: Self-published, 1902), Pg 14.

3 —, The History of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Part II (Chicago, IL: A. W. Warner & Co., 1889), Pg 404, 417, 680.

4 John H. Wallace, Genealogy of the Wallace Family (New York: Self-published, 1902), Pg 8.

5 —, The History of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Part II (Chicago, IL: A. W. Warner & Co., 1889), Pg 417.

6 John H. Wallace, Genealogy of the Wallace Family (New York: Self-published, 1902), Pg 25.

7 Franklin Ellis, History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: L. H. Everts & Co., 1882), Pg 651.

8 Boyd Crumrine, History of Washington County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: L. H. Everts & Co., 1882), Pg 556.

9 —, Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1893), Pg 44, 121.

10 John H. Wallace, Genealogy of the Wallace Family (New York: Self-published, 1902), Pg 23.

11 —, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, PA: Galaxy Publishing Company, 1874), Pg 634.

12 Franklin Ellis, History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: L. H. Everts & Co., 1882), Pg 144.

13 —, Nelson's Biographical Dictionary and Historical Reference Book of Fayette County, Pennsylvania (Uniontown, PA: S. B. Nelson, Publisher, 1900), Pg 520.

14 —, Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1893), Pg 121.