Flora wellman biography of donald

Flora Wellman was born to a well-to-do family, but lost her mother, Eleanor Garrett Jones, at the age of three. Although pampered by her father, Marshall Wellman, [1] Flora detested her stepmother and, at age sixteen, ran away to live with her sister Mary in Alliance, OH. Local gossip suggested she had had an affair with an older, married man.

She headed west, and in Seattle in she met William Henry Chaney, a professional astrologer and an inveterate lady's man; he had at least three wives of dubious legality before he took up with Flora. The couple moved to San Francisco, where Flora gave piano lessons and Chaney supported himself with lecturing. When Flora informed him she was pregnant, Chaney and she quarreled fiercely to the end of his life, he insisted he was not the child's father and demanded she leave their home.

In despair, Flora took a neighbor's pistol and shot herself in the head.

Flora Wellman (born Howland)

According to Chaney's own account, the pitiful sight of the pregnant woman with blood pouring from her head roused the residents of their neighborhood into a furious mob who nearly lynched Chaney. A family named the Slocums took in Flora and her baby. Not physically well enough to nurse her child, Flora put baby Jack into the care of a wet-nurse and former slave, Jennie Prentiss.

Jennie's husband, Alonzo, had an acquaintance by the name of John London, a carpenter and Union veteran. John London and Flora Wellman were married in Later, Jack London would complain that the family moved "six times a year". In the widowed Flora lived with Jack in Oakland, California. She died in California in Login to see how you relate to 33 million family members.

Florence Wellman London -