Archives West Finding Aid

John Bernard Wisenall was born in Maysville, Kentucky on July 2, 1833. He grew up learning the carpenter's trade and became a devout member of the Methodist Church. Wisenall worked in Aberdeen, Ohio as a young man, but the news of gold strikes on the western frontier convinced him to leave the Ohio valley and try his chances in the territories out west. He may have gone to California in the early 1850s, but by 1859 he was living in Denver, Colorado where he sold a town lot on August 22 of that year. By June 25, 1860, Wisenall had moved on to Omaha, Nebraska where the Census reports him as living in the home of Charles P. Birkett, an attorney from Trinidad. During the next two years, Wisenall worked in Omaha as a carpenter and became active in the choir of the local Methodist Church. The news of the gold discoveries in the Bannack and Virginia City areas of Montana convinced Wisenall to go west again sometime in 1863, and he worked in a mercantile partnership with George W. Forbes in Virginia City in January, 1864. Widely recognized as a devout Christian, Wisenall acted as an informal preacher and Sunday school teacher in Bannack and Virginia City, and was called on at least once to assist condemned outlaws in their final prayers before they were executed by the Vigilantes in the winter of 1863-64. In 1865, Wisenall began locating and recording quartz lode gold claims with the intention of speculating on their value. He may have left the territory sometime as early as the spring of 1866, but in 1867, along with Gilbert B. Weeks, Aaron W. Raymond, George W. Raymond, Andrew Crawford, and W. B. Hoyt, Wisenall formed a partnership to work one of the most promising of the quartz gold claims they collectively held. The ore did not turn a profit after milling and the enterprise was a failure. By 1876, Wisenall had settled in Covington, Kentucky with his growing family. He worked there as a carpentry contractor and real estate agent until his death on November 6, 1907.