The Andrews Men

Rev. Wells Andrews Sr. was born on November 21, 1787, in Hartland, Connecticut.  His father, Asa, was 31 years old, and his mother, Lucy, was 24. He married Nancy Lee Harper on September 14, 1819, in the District of Columbia. They had eight children in 15 years. He died on February 14, 1867, in Washington, Illinois, having lived a long life of 79 years.

In 1816, after graduating, he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of New Brunswick, New Jersey, and appointed by the Home Missionary Society to the Second Presbyterian Church of Alexandria, Virginia, where he preached for ten years. In 1827, when the congregation at Hartford completed their Connecticut-style church building, they invited him to become pastor of the organization founded by the Rev. Harvey Coe. He came with his family by carriage across the mountains and stayed for 10 years. These ten years seemed to have been the golden age of this church. An extensive revival occurred during his pastorate, with the assistance of Rev. Lucius Foote.

It was from the Hartford church in 1837 that he was called to the professorship of Languages at Ohio University in Athens. 

In 1843, he relocated to Washington, where he spent one year and then spent the next 10 years at Tremont, having purchased a farm and ministered to a Congregational church. In 1854, he returned to Washington, IL, where he regularly preached in the Presbyterian Church for six years and occasionally did so for the remainder of his life.

Wells Harper Andrews, son of Wells Sr. and Nancy, was born in 1826 in Alexandria, Virginia, which at that time was part of the District of Columbia.  John Asa Andrews, another son of Wells and Nancy, was born in 1827 in Ohio.

In 1851, Wells Harper and John Asa purchased the old brick mill on Wood Street.

Wells and John Asa would run the mill successfully until their deaths, after which the business was taken over in 1904 by John A. Andrews, son of Wells and Theodore Roehm, son-in-law of John Asa.  In 1923, the company was sold to the Washington Farmers Co-operative Association with Roehm staying on as manager.