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A Guide to the Collection at the Indiana University Archives

Processed by Kristen Walker, Ann Cox, and Anne C. Pederson. Updated by Kristen White.
Electronic finding aid encoded by Kristen R. Walker and updated by Jeannine Roe.

Summary Information

Repository
Indiana University Office of University Archives and Records Management
1320 East Tenth Street
Herman B Wells Library E460
Bloomington, IN 47405-7000
Phone: 812-855-1127
Email: archives@indiana.edu
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/archives

Creator
Wylie family.

Title
Wylie family collection, 1822-1990,  bulk 1840-1900

Collection No.
C203

Extent
2.4 cubic feet (3 boxes)

Language
Materials are in English.

Abstract
The Wylie family represented in this collection are all family members or descendents of Indiana University's first president, Andrew Wylie. Many of the earliest family members were closely associated with the university themselves. The collection includes correspondence, financial records, newspaper clippings, obituaries, academic records, journals, scrapbooks, drawings, and poetry. In addition to family affairs, the collection includes information about Indiana University and Bloomington, Indiana, including land deeds and a 19th century account book from Bloomington's McCalla store.

Access Restrictions

This collection is open for research.

Advance notice is required.

Biographical Note

Andrew Wylie was born in 1789 in Washington County, PA. He graduated from Jefferson College in 1820 and became president of that college two years later, where he served until 1828. He was the first president of Indiana University, having been elected in 1829, and remained in that position until his death in 1851. He married Margaret Ritchie (b.1791) in 1813 and they had twelve children together: Andrew, William, Mary Ann, Craig Ritchie, Elizabeth, John Hosea, Samuel, Margaret, Irene Catherine, Redick McKee, Anderson McElroy and Jane Melheme. Margaret Ritchie Wylie died in 1859.

Andrew Wylie Jr. was born in 1814 in Pennsylvania, the eldest of Andrew and Margaret Wylie’s children. He graduated from IU in 1832 with a BA and an MA. He studied law in Kentucky and practiced in Pittsburg. He married Mary Caroline Bryan in 1845 and they had three sons, only one of whom survived to adulthood. They moved to Washington D.C., and Andrew pursued a long career in jurisprudence. He was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia in 1863 by President Lincoln and served in the position until his retirement in 1884. He died in 1905.

William Wylie was the second Wylie child, born in 1816. He died of typhus during his senior year at IU in 1835.

Mary Ann Wylie was Andrew and Margaret Wylie’s third child, born in 1817. She married James Finley Dodds in 1838, and they had nine children. The first of these was (Rachel) Emma, who married William W. Irwin. The next child was Samuel Wylie. He died in 1861 from disease in the Civil War. Mary Ann Dodds died in 1886, a mere two days after her husband. They are buried in the same grave.

Craig Ritchie was born in 1819, the fourth of the Wylie children. He graduated from IU in 1838 and taught school in Kentucky. He died of congestive fever in 1840.

Elizabeth Wylie was born in 1821 the next child after Craig Ritchie. She married John McCalla in 1856, and they had one daughter, Mary Ballantine McCalla, in 1857. She died in 1900.

John Hosea Wylie was born in 1823 in Pennsylvania. He was the sixth child of Andrew and Margaret Wylie. He graduated from Indiana University in 1841 and from University of Louisville medical school in 1845. He set up practice in Richmond, Indiana. He married Lizzie Leeds in 1851, and they had one daughter, Irene. During the last few years of his life, Wylie traveled to California, modern-day Washington and Oregon and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in hopes of recovering from his tuberculosis. He finally died on the island of Kaui in March 1855. His wife died of consumption the next year back in Bloomington. Irene Wylie was raised by her mother’s family.

Samuel Theophylact Wylie was the seventh of the Wylie children, born in 1825 in Pennsylvania. He graduated from IU in 1843 and from IU’s Law Dept. in 1845. He died of typhoid fever in Cincinnati in 1850.

Margaret Wylie was born in 1826. She married Rev. Samuel Martin in 1849 and worked with him as a missionary in Ningpo, China from 1850-1858. They also worked in Texas, Idaho, Kansas and Nebraska. They had seven children, including Susan Louisa, later Susan Martin, who was born in 1851. Margaret Wylie Martin died in 1898.

Irene Catherine Wylie was the ninth of the Wylie children, born in 1829. She married Joseph Bell in 1849, and they had five children, two of whom died young. The three surviving children were Margaret, Wylie, and Frances. Irene Wylie Bell died in 1878 due to a fall from a carriage.

Redick McKee Wylie was born in 1831, the tenth of Andrew and Margaret Wylie’s children. He graduated from IU in 1851 and worked as a farmer and as a merchant in Bloomington with his brother-in-law John McCalla. He married Madeleine Thompson in 1870, and they had four children. They were Jane, who married Harry Axtell, Redick Andrew, who married Thana Winslow, Francis, who married Mary Grouch, and Madeleine, who married Lewis Sentney. Redick Wylie Sr. died in December 1904.

Anderson McElroy Wylie was born in 1833, the eleventh of the twelve Wylie children. He graduated from IU in 1852 and taught for three years in Philadelphia before attending the Episcopal Seminary in Virginia. He was a preacher in the Episcopal Church and then in the Presbyterian Church in New York and Massachusetts. He married Margaret Conklin in 1860, and they had four children. He died in 1892.

Jane Melheme Wylie was born in 1836, the youngest of Andrew Wylie’s children. She attended the Monroe County Female Seminary and was an accomplished pianist. In 1860, after her mother’s death, she traveled to Philadelphia, Wheeling and New York State, but eventually returned to Bloomington and lived with her brother Redick. She suffered for years from diabetes, but died of “congestive failure” in 1865.

Craig Dorsey Ritchie was the son of William and Susan Ritchie, making him Margaret Ritchie Wylie’s nephew and cousin to the Wylie children. He was a conveyancer, or writer of documents.

Abigail Ritchie was born in 1810, the youngest of Margaret Ritchie Wylie’s siblings. She was a favorite aunt to the Wylie children and lived in the Wylie House from 1848-1850. She moved to California to live with Eliza Ritchie McKee after 1854. She never married.

Jane Ritchie was another of Margaret Ritchie’s sisters and aunt to the Wylie children. She never married and was often unwell.

Eliza Ritchie McKee was born in 1802, a younger sister to Margaret Ritchie Wylie. She married Redick McKee, and they had five children. One of these was Andrew, a favorite cousin to the Wylie children. She died in 1871.

Noah S. Leeds was the brother of Lizzie Leeds Wylie.

Jonathan Letherman was Margaret Ritchie Wylie’s brother-in-law, married to her sister Anne. He was a physician in Pennsylvania.

A.L. Bickle was a maternal aunt of Irene Wylie, the daughter of John and Lizzie Leeds Wylie.

Hugh Wylie was possibly Andrew Wylie Sr.’s uncle, the brother of Andrew’s father, Adam. This information is inconclusive.

Theophilus A. Wylie (b. 1810) was a half-cousin to Andrew Wylie and the son of Samuel Brown Wylie. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1836 he was named Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry at IU. He married Rebecca Dennis in 1838, and they had eight children. Theophilus purchased the Wylie House in 1859 and lived there until his death in 1895. His brother was Theodorus William John Wylie. One of his sisters was Susan, who married Robert Black; another was Margaret Thomson, who married John McLeod. Among their children was Susie L. McLeod Wylie. T.A.Wylie’s great-granddaughter was Louise Wylie Hoffman.

Rebecca Dennis Wylie, Theophilus A. Wylie’s wife, was born in 1812 in Germantown, PA. Elizabeth and Adelaide Dennis were her sisters. Anna C. Dennis was unofficially adopted by Emma Dennis as a young girl, and as such was an "adopted" niece of Rebecca's. Rebecca Wylie died in 1913 at her home, Wylie House, in Bloomington, Indiana.

Elizabeth Louisa Wylie, b. 1839, was the oldest child of Theophilus and Rebecca. She was a graduate of Glendale Female College in Ohio and Indiana University (1871). She married IU professor Hermann Boisen in 1873. They had two children, Anton and Marie. She died in 1930.

Richard Dennis Wylie was the eldest son of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie. He was born in 1841 and died of disease during the Civil War in 1861.

Margaret Wylie, b. 1843, was the third child of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie. She married Arthur Calvin Mellette, who was a boarder at her parents’ home in the 1860’s. He would later go on to be the first Governor of South Dakota, which became a state in 1889. They had four sons: Theophilus Wylie ("Wylie"), Charles Edmond ("Charlie"), Arthur Anton ("Anton"), and Joshua Theodore Richard ("Dick").

Theophilus Andrew Wylie was the sixth of the Wylie children. He was born in 1852 and died unexpectedly when a cold turned into an ailment of the lungs in 1878 when he was 26 years old.

Samuel Brown Wylie was born in 1854, the seventh of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie’s children. He was the second Samuel Brown in the family; his brother Samuel Brown died at the age of three in 1851. Wylie married Sarah Seabrook Mitchell of Edisto Island, South Carolina, in 1876. Their four children were Theophilus Andrew ("Theo"), Samuel Brown ("Sam"), Rebecca ("Reba"), and Laurence Seabrook ("Laurie"). Samuel Brown Wylie died in 1890.

Theodorus William John was the youngest of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie’s children. He was born in 1857 and named for Theophilus’s brother. He married Fannie Southgate Thompson in 1882. T.W.J. Wylie died in 1934.

Cornelius Pering is a distant great uncle of Thana Winslow Wylie, daughter in-law of Redick Wylie, Andrew Wylie’s son. Pering was a native of Bath, England and came to Bloomington in 1832 to become principal of the Monroe County Female Seminary, which he ran until he resigned to move to Louisville in 1846. His grandson was Alfred.

John Pering, a cousin of Cornelius, corresponded with the archivists at IU in the 1970’s about Cornelius and other members of the Pering family.

Scope and Content Note

The collection has been organized into nine series: Correspondence; Financial Materials; Drawings; Clippings and Obituaries; Genealogies; Academic Materials; Journals; Realia; Poetry. Within each series materials have been further divided into sub-series based on family groupings, e.g., the Andrew Wylie Family, the Margaret Ritchie Wylie Family. Each sub-series has then been put into chronological order by the date of birth of the head of the family, e.g., Andrew Wylie Family correspondence comes before the Andrew Wylie, Jr. Family correspondence. Therein, each individual in the sub-series has also been listed in chronological order with the oldest members of the family listed first. For each individual, the records he or she created or received have been placed in chronological order. The series run from the Correspondence series of the Wylie family, which is the largest, to the Realia series, which is the smallest. Each series has been processed down to the item level.

The Correspondence series spans from 1832-1990. Letters are filed with their recipients unless the author is a family member. In these instances the correspondence is filed with the author in the appropriate sub-series. Andrew’s unmarried children have been put into his sub-series, while the married children and their families, for both Andrew and Theophilus Wylie, have received separate sub-series. Andrew and Theophilus Wylie’s wives, Margaret Ritchie and Rebecca Dennis, are also organized into separate sub-series with their siblings, nieces and nephews. Andrew Wylie Jr., John Hosea Wylie, Margaret Wylie Martin and Anderson McElroy Wylie have the most letters in this series. Andrew Wylie Jr.’s letters are of particular interest, as they are addressed to many different family members.

The Financial Materials series includes balance reports, estate receipts and bills, among other items, for the Andrew and Theophilus Wylie families. Of particular interest is an account book for the McCalla store. There is also a scrapbook of notes from a court case between Harry Axtell and Gordon Bingham concerning a land deed. Most of the materials in this series relates to the estate expenses of Hugh Wylie, who may have been Andrew Sr.’s uncle.

Most of the drawings in the Drawings series are rendered by either Richard Dennis Wylie, Theophilus Wylie’s eldest son, or unknown family members. The drawings feature various subjects and locales, probably found in Bloomington. There are two drawings of Theophilus Wylie; one is by Richard Wylie and one is by an unknown artist, the latter showing T.A. Wylie with his granddaughter Marie.

The Clippings and Obituaries comprise a vast array of subjects with the common theme being the Wylie families and their assorted relatives. Some are reflective notes on the Wylie families; some are newspaper articles from the late-1800s. Cornelius Pering is the author of two clippings, in which he reflects upon his life in Bloomington. This series also has several obituaries for Samuel Brown Wylie, son of Theophilus and Rebecca. Any material relating to Theophilus’s father, also known as Samuel Brown Wylie, refers to S.B. Wylie. The most extensive sub-series relates to Rebecca Dennis Wylie, whose 100th birthday was a significant event in Bloomington in 1912.

The Genealogy series consists of any biographical information for the members found in this collection. Some items were written by the subjects themselves, while others are notes from a researcher’s point of view years later. Jane Wylie Axtell was a genealogist, and included in this series is her history of her ancestors going back to the American Revolution. Although no one person has a majority of items in this series, the Dodds family has a number of materials compiled by H. Schermerhorn and Mary Crotzer.

Academic Materials range from speeches to report cards. Irene Wylie’s copybook, dated 1840-1841, is in this series. Also included are a description of the Wylie House and a segment of Charles Hentz’s autobiography that mentions Samuel Brown Wylie. Most of the material relates to the Mary Ann Wylie Dodds Family, whose sub-series consists of a number of speeches about various topics.

The Journals series is comprised mostly of personal journals. There are three small autograph books belonging to Jane Wylie Axtell as well as an appointment book belonging to S.B. Wylie. Many of the journals have been reprinted or include typed transcriptions of the original. The Margaret Wylie Mellette sub-series contains the most materials, including two Civil War diaries composed by Margaret and her husband, Arthur.

The Realia series is comprised of miscellaneous items such as scraps of music. Among the items is a small picture book of Leipzig and a Monroe County ballot from the late 19th century. This series also contains large sub-series of photographs and paintings that are located in the archives photograph collection or offsite. Please ask staff for more information about the paintings and photographs related to this collection.

The final series in the collection is Poetry. Marie Wylie Boisen is one of the authors featured in this series. There are also several poems whose authors could not be determined at the time the collection was processed.

Arrangement

This collection is organized into nine series: Correspondence; Financial materials; Drawings; Clippings and obituaries; Genealogies; Academic materials; Journals; Realia; and Poetry. Each series is then further organized into sub-series based upon family unit.

• Indexing Terms

• The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in IUCAT, the IU Libraries' online catalog. Materials about related topics, persons or places can be found by searching the catalog using these terms.

• • Names
  • Indiana University --History --19th century --Sources.
  • Indiana University --History --20th century --Sources.
  • Wylie, Andrew, 1814-1905 --Archives.
  • Wylie, Andrew, 1814-1905 --Correspondence.
  • Wylie, John Hosea, 1823-1855 --Archives.
  • Wylie, John Hosea, 1823-1855 --Correspondence.
  • Pering, Cornelius --Archives.
  • Pering, Cornelius --Correspondence.
  • Boisen, Anton T. (Anton Theophilus), 1876-1965 --Archives.
  • Boisen, Anton T. (Anton Theophilus), 1876-1965 --Correspondence.
  • Wylie, Jane Melheme, 1836-1865 --Archives.
  • Wylie, Jane Melheme, 1836-1865 --Correspondence.
  • McCalla, Elizabeth Wylie, 1821-1900 --Archives.
  • McCalla, Elizabeth Wylie, 1821-1900 --Correspondence.
  • Wylie, Hugh, 1828 --Archives.
  • Martin, Margaret Wylie, 1826-1898 --Archives.
  • Martin, Margaret Wylie, 1826-1898 --Correspondence.
  • Bell, Irene Wylie, 1829-1878 --Archives.
  • Bell, Irene Wylie, 1829-1878 --Correspondence.
  • Axtell, Jane Wylie --Archives.
  • Axtell, Jane Wylie --Correspondence.
  • Wylie, Anderson McElroy, 1833-1892 --Archives.
  • Wylie, Anderson McElroy, 1833-1892 --Correspondence.
  • Boisen, Elizabeth Louisa Wylie, 1839-1930 --Archives.
  • Boisen, Elizabeth Louisa Wylie, 1839-1930 --Correspondence.
  • Mellette, Charles --Archives.
  • Mellette, Charles --Correspondence.
• • Places
  • Bloomington (Ind.) --Politics and government --19th century.
  • Bloomington (Ind.) --Social life and customs --19th century.

Separated Material

Photographs and artwork have been separated from the collection. Please contact the archivist for more details.

The Sample County Ballot in the Realia series is an oversized item. To access this item please contact archives staff.

Related Material

Related photographs may be available in the University Archives Photographs Database: http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/archivesphotos/

See also Collection C1, Andrew Wylie papers; C207, Andrew Wylie Presidential records; and C202, Theophilus A. Wylie papers.

Administrative Information

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