Another recent scouring of Oconto newspapers brought this interesting tidbit to my attention just in time for mid-term elections:

So what was the Hayes and Wheeler Club and why was gramps John Cain a member?

From what little I have been able to find about this club, it looks like it was patriotic in nature and organized in many states across the country, for the purpose of “securing re-nomination and re- election of President Rutherford B. Hayes.”

John appears to have been republican in beliefs, and was enthusiastic enough for Hayes to be elected that he joined the club to help rouse the populace to vote for his favorite ticket.

Here is a small bit of biography on Hayes from his Wikipedia entry:

Hayes was a lawyer and staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings in the antebellum years.

He was nominated as the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1876 and elected through the Compromise of 1877 that officially ended the Reconstruction Era by leaving the South to govern itself. In office he withdrew military troops from the South, ending Army support for Republican state governments in the South and the efforts of African-American freedmen to establish their families as free citizens. He promoted civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction.

John did not enlist in the Civil War. Having been born in 1852, he was too young to have enlisted. (I am very thankful he was too young, because he might have died and I wouldn’t be here now talking about him.) Even though he was not in the war, he was a peripheral part of it, and was affected by the aftermath, as was the whole nation. His support for Hayes gives me a sense of his political leanings and beliefs, something he left no clue about to his descendants, until this article was found.

I’ll end this post with a friendly reminder. VOTE!

Sources:
Oconto County Reporter, 1876-07-22; v5issue38p3col4
Oconto County Reporter, 1876-08-19; v5issue42p3col4
Oconto County Reporter, 1876-09-02; v5issue44