Degree Recipient

Life Experience

Obadiah Jennings Wise was named after his maternal grandfather, Reverend Obadiah Jennings. He was also a direct descendant of Captain Edmond Scarborough, who brought his family to America on the “Mayflower” in 1620. Wise was the son of a pastor’s daughter and a popular lawyer (Henry Wise), who graduated under the presidency of Andrew Wylie (later IU’s first president) at Washington College. His elder sister, Mary, was born in September 1829. His namesake grandfather died in January 1832. His parents called him, Oby.

In April 1833, Wise’s father, Henry, was elected to Congress. He quickly became known for his oratory skill, and he stayed in Washington for entire sessions. Wise’s younger brother, Henry Jr., was born in 1834. Two more siblings were born, but they died in infancy. A third sibling was born and survived. In the spring of 1837, while his mother was pregnant with her seventh child, their house caught fire and was destroyed. Wise’s father was gone at the time. The family moved into a friend’s house in Drummondtown, on the eastern peninsula, but that house also mysteriously was set afire and burned down. In that fire, Wise’s youngest sibling perished. His mother was so upset that, even though she gave birth to a healthy daughter, Annie, in 1837, she died a week later from nervous system damage, leaving four children. “Ann’s favorite servant” (as his father said in a letter) tried to take on a surrogate mother role for the children, as they stayed in Drummondtown, and, as is apparent from the children’s letters, the father was gone more than ever. Wise’s father was a proponent of annexing Texas to the U.S., a hot topic at the time. Various aunts and uncles would come to visit or let Wise and his siblings stay with them.

When Wise was nine, his father married a congressman’s daughter, Sarah Sergeant, of Philadelphia.  Wise would grow to love her as much as his birth mother, as he later reminisced. Henry Sr. and Sarah had seven children together, including Richard, Margaretta (known by her Portuguese nickname “Néné”), and John, the last two born in Rio de Janeiro. Wise’s father took him (age twelve) and his family to Brazil when, in February 1844, President Tyler appointed Henry Sr. as U.S. Minister to Brazil. Wise later wrote that “we lived a pleasant life in Brazil....we luxuriated in a climate and scenery which I cannot believe to be surpassed.”

In 1847, Wise traveled from South America to Bloomington, Indiana, to be a student under his father’s former master, Andrew Wylie. The rest of the family returned to Virginia later that year. Wise stayed in Indiana during his college education, except for a single visit to his mother’s brother, a doctor in Tennessee. Wise became “ardently attached” to Andrew Wylie, by his own admission.

While a student at IU, Wise discovered his talent for writing, both poetry and religious fiction, including furnishing several pieces for the Indiana Tribune. His Commencement Day speech at IU in 1850 was so well remembered that it was published by request. Sixty-five years later, IU Alumni Quarterly reprinted it. An excerpt (including its final words): “For it were impious to believe that we are sent into a sinful world without a power, an inborn power – a conscious sense of right and wrong – of good and evil, to protect us from the overwhelming force which sin and earth and hell forever wield against our earthly peace and our eternal happiness....For as imagination lends to earthly love its wildest rapture, thus there is no time the heart doth so lift up in thankfulness to God, as when its silent visions and bright golden dreams around us play.” Wise graduated from IU in 1850 at age nineteen. He was in the same graduating class as his first cousins: George Douglas Wise, John Henry Wise, and John James Wise. That fall, while his father was in the middle of a speech at a constitutional convention, Wise received word that Sarah had died, at age thirty-three, after the birth of (and along with) her seventh child. Her son Spencer (who Wise had been especially fond of) died the following year. Thus only three of Sarah’s seven children survived infancy.

Throwing himself into his law studies, Wise obtained a law degree in less than a year at the William and Mary Law School at Williamsburg. President Franklin Pierce then appointed him attaché to the American embassy in Berlin, Germany, and later to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, France. While Wise was in Europe in 1853, his father married Mary Elizabeth Lyons of Virginia.  In 1856, Wise’s father, Henry, became governor of Virginia. In 1857, Wise returned to his siblings in Virginia after years abroad. He took editorship of the Richmond Enquirer, using his press position to advantage to muster support for his father. As governor, his father took responsibility for making the controversial decision to execute John Brown in 1859.

In 1861, Wise supported Virginia when it seceded from the Union and fought for his home state in the Civil War. That summer and fall, he served under his father (who had been made captain) in West Virginia and  was in several engagements. Early in 1862, less than a year after the war’s start, Wise was part of an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the Union army from invading Roanoke. Greatly outnumbered, the battle turned into a murderous volley. Wise’s sword arm had already fallen limp due to a wrist fracture by a minie-ball, and he was then shot a second time. “His soldiers were passionately attached to him” and risked their lives to retrieve him on a blanket and carry him to the rear, out of further fire. The men had found a small boat and were bearing him along in the boat to his father’s headquarters, so that he could die there. A colonel in the New York 9th shot him from the shore a third time and killed him en route. Lieutenant R. S. Sanxay wrote, upon his death, “gallant leader, Capt. O Jennings...fell whilst nobly defending the hearth-stones and fire-sides of the people of the South.” Wise’s younger brother, John, reconciled with his killer in 1894. When John wrote his Civil War book in 1899, he called him among his friends.

Marriage and Family

Wise was the first cousin of George Douglas Wise, first cousin of John Henry Wise, and first cousin of John James Wise.

Interesting Anecdote

In 1856, Wise County, Texas, and Wise County, Virginia, were both named for his father, Henry, who was governor of Virginia at the time. Both counties exist today and are named as such.

References

1. Wylie
2. Findagrave.com
3. Wikipedia
4. bluegrayreview.com/tag/obadiah-jennings-wise/
5. thefamilyletters.com
6. The Brandon Post 11/07/1850
7. Richmond Daily Dispatch 02/25/1862
8. Wise, John S. (1899) The End of an Era (New York: Houghton Mifflin)
9. Indiana University Alumni Quarterly 1915 (#2)
10. Trexler, Harrison (1950) "The Davis Administration and the Richmond Press, 1861 - 1865" The Journal of Southern History Vol. 16 #2 (May) pp. 177 - 195