Born and raised in Rhode Island, twenty-three-year-old Thomas C. Wells apparently was a reluctant Kansas immigrant. His initial ambivalence is reflected in his first letter from Providence, Rhode Island, on March 12, 1855, where he wrote: "I may yet see it best to return [home from Boston] and not go [to Kansas] at all." This, Wells's first letter from "the far famed Kanzas Territory," is to his mother from Topeka, Kansas Territory. It describes the journey from the border via Lawrence and reports his intention to "start for Big Blue, where Mr. Goodnow is tomorrow." Part of the journey was made in the company of some well-armed Missourians "who were going to Lawrence to vote," presumably in the March 30 legislative election. All of Thomas C. Wells's extensive correspondence from Kansas Territory was published in 1936 in the "Kansas Historical Quarterly."
Kansas Memory
Kansas Historical Society
Thomas Clarke Wells to Sarah Elizabeth Clarke Wells - p. 1