Walter Wellman

Walter E. Wellman (November 3, 1858 – January 31, 1934) was an American journalist, explorer, and aëronaut, born at Mentor, Ohio, and educated in the public schools.

Walter Wellman was born in Mentor, Ohio, in 1858. He was the sixth son of Alonzo Wellman and the fourth by his second wife Minerva Sibilla (Graves) Wellman. Walter was a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Puritan Thomas Wellman. Walter's father, Alonzo, served three years in the American Civil War while Walter was young. He was initially with Company D of the 105th Ohio Infantry before becoming a ship-carpenter with the Mississippi River Squadron. When he returned from the war, he took his family west from Ohio to become pioneer settlers of York County, Nebraska.

At age 14 Walter established a weekly newspaper in Sutton, Nebraska. At age 21 Walter returned to Ohio to establish the Cincinnati Evening Post and married Laura McCann in Canton, Ohio on 24 December 1879. They had five daughters. In 1884 he became political and Washington DC correspondent for the Chicago Herald and Record-Herald.

In 1892 Walter marked with a monument the presumed landing place of Christopher Columbus on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. In 1894 he led a polar expedition east of Svalbard to latitude 81° N. He led another expedition to latitude 82° N through Franz Josef Land in 1898 and 1899.

On December 31, 1905, Wellman announced he would make an attempt to reach the North Pole, but this time with an airship. His newspaper provided funds of USD 250,000, and he had an airship built in Paris for the Wellman Chicago Record-Herald Polar Expedition. Wellman established expedition headquarters on Dane's Island, Svalbard, in the summer of 1906. The hangar was not completed until August 1906, and the airship’s engines self-destructed when tested. Wellman rebuilt the airship in Paris that winter and attempted an aerial voyage to the North Pole in September, 1907. He made a second attempt without financial assistance in 1909, but mechanical failures forced him to turn back 60 miles (100 km.) north of Svalbard.

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