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This enlargement of the upper left-hand corner of the census sheet shows the names of Oliver Wheeler and Benjamin F Wheeler as heads of household.

Oliver’s family now consists of himself and one “female person.” Since no unmarried females are counted in the other columns, we gather that Oliver and Hannah have become empty-nesters since 1830.
Assuming that the fifth entry represents our Uncle Benjamin Franklin Wheeler, born to Oliver and Hannah in Salem in 1808, we have a twenty-seven-year-old householder, apparently still living with his parents (the census attributes no land to him) but supporting three females: one married under age 45, and two unmarried under sixteen. The simplest explanation is that Benjamin has married and already has two daughters, and that the two households are sharing the parental homestead in Elton.1

A deed dated 1852 refers to Oliver (he was then 70, with two years to live) as a cabinetmaker, and in the 1835 census the Wheeler households, taken together, look indeed like that of a craftsman or artisan, not a farmer.

1Probably Sarah Helen Elizabeth Wheeler and Julia Ann C Wheeler, reported as 19 and 14, respectively, in the 1850 Census for Akron, Summit County, Ohio. By then, Benjamin’s first wife, Eliza Osborn, had died, leaving him with three daughters and a son. Around 1846, he remarried. By 1850, his second wife, Catherine, about 22 years his junior, had already presented him with the first two of their four children. It’s unclear how much contact these grandchildren of OliverAndHannah had with their grandparents, still living in Elton.

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