Captain Peter Wex

Captain Peter Wex is a native of Germany, a son of Peter and Dorothea {Linn} Wex. There were three other children in the family: Lawrence, who is engaged in the wholesale wrapping paper business at Buffalo; Elizabeth, wife of Joseph Hern, of Buffalo; and Henry, a printer, who is now deceased. Peter Wex, the father, was a farmer in his native country, but was engaged in the hardware and coal business at Buffalo previous to his decease in 1891.

Captain Wex was born December 24, 1842, and attended school in his native place six years. He was twelve years of age when he emigrated to America; the family locating at Buffalo, N. Y., of which city he has been a resident forty-two years. In 1868 he purchased the schooner Resolute, of which he was captain, but she was substantially in charge of sailing masters until Captain Wex took active command. In 1871 he left her to engage in the coal business at Buffalo, and she was lost October 20, of that year, under Long Point, where she went ashore in a gale. She was insured with the Albany City and Security, of New York, but her owner received only a small percentage of her insurance because of the embarrassment of the respective companies caused by their losses at the great Chicago fire.

Captain Wex conducted a coal business four years and between 1871 and 1879 was the owner of several schooners navigating on the Great Lakes, in 1879 being master as well as owner of the schooner Mary Birckhead. The succeeding season he sold her and purchased the schooner Golden Rule, which he sailed two seasons. In 1882 he was master and owner of the schooner City of the Straits, and was later master and owner of the schooner Annie Vought and the steamer Potomac, sailing the latter two seasons as a steamer and three as a barge after she was dismantled. He was next master of the steamer St. Louis for a period of six seasons, during which time she had for her consorts the barges Annie Vought and Potomac, both of them owned by Captain Wex. In 1892 he was given master's berth on the steamer Inter Ocean, which had for her consort the barge Richard Winslow, owned by him, and he has sailed the Inter Ocean eight consecutive seasons. On November 27, 1896, Captain Wex was a victim of a vicious assault made upon him by two discharged watchmen, while his vessel was at the dock at Escanaba, where she had run in for shelter while on her way to Milwaukee. They had been discharged and paid off by Captain, the amount due them being small, as they had only shipped from Toledo. While he was returning to the vessel after purchasing a newspaper, the watchmen attacked him and he was so badly pounded and bruised that from the time he reached his home he was compelled to remain indoors substantially all of the succeeding winter, under the treatment of his physician, because of the severe shock to his nerves. His assailants were arrested and partly paid the penalty of their brutality by being locked up in jail several months. Captain Wex is a member of the Ship Masters Association, and carries Pennant No. 966. He is also a member of the local Harbor No. 41, of the American Association of Masters and Pilots.

He was married at Buffalo, in 1865 to Miss Louisa Domedion, who died October 3, 1893, and by whom he has had seven children: Louisa Regina, married to Charles Strout, of Rouseville, Penn.; Anna Dorothy; Elizabeth, married to Fred E. Allen, of Buffalo; Dorothy Barbara and Hattie L. They have a very comfortable home at No. 151 Morgan street, Buffalo.

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Volume I

This version of Volume II is based, with permission, on the work of the great volunteers at the Marine Captains Biographies site. To them goes the credit for reorganizing the content into some coherent order. The biographies in the original volume are in essentially random order.

Some of the transcription work was also done by Brendon Baillod, who maintains an excellent guide to Great Lakes Shipwreck Research.