John Wesley Doane

Life in context.

23. John Wesley Doane (1833–1901)
Doane moved to Chicago as a young man and built a grocery concern into one of the largest businesses of its kind in the Northwest before the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the enterprise. He rebuilt his commercial career, later becoming president of Merchants’ Loan & Trust and a director of major corporations including the Pullman Palace Car Company and Illinois Central Railroad. He was among the citizens who backed the financing that helped make Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition possible.
Evidence status. Direct relationship supported by the Wicks/Doane family record.
Original Stephen Chamberlain Wicks family genealogical wheel supplied by Harriet Powell. Used here as a genuine family-history artifact, not as a portrait.
Research sources: Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois — John Wesley Doane; Published Doane family genealogy