John Wanless (1833-1886) was born in St. Andrew's, Argenteuil, Quebec, Canada. He left home at about the age of 14 and lived for awhile in Illinois (possibly at Galena and Chicago), where he was supposedly admitted to the Illinois Bar. He came to Colorado about 1859. In 1862 he became Captain of a volunteer company of soldiers, the 3rd Colorado Volunteers. He served as Provost-Marshal of Colorado at Denver from 1863-1865, then he led his company of soldiers to Illinois and mustered into the 5th Regiment, United States Volunteers as Lieutenant Colonel in 1865. He served as Commandant at Fort Halleck (now in Wyoming) in 1866 and then resigned from the service. He lived in Denver, Colorado, where he was a land speculator and had contracts to put the timbers & ties in for the railroads in the area. He separated from Maria in the late 1870s and in 1880 he was a lawyer in Leadville, CO and Maria and the children were in Laramie, Wyoming. John obtained a divorce from Maria in Leadville in Nov 1880 and within a month he married Mary Ella Clough, who remained his wife until his death in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1886. In his last 4 years, he suffered some sort of spinal paralysis. Maria was in Denver in 1884 and may have died by 1886. Around 1900, Mark Wanless (son of John) went to Mexico to work in the mining industry and married a Sonoran girl. Some of their children stayed in Mexico and some returned to the USA in the 1920s, settling in Arizona. Today, there are descendants of Mark Wanless in Mexico and Arizona. John's other children spread out through Colorado, Montana, and El Paso, Texas.
Descendants of Lt. Col. John Wanless & Maria Gates
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