Individual Details

Death

Family legend: shot to death on the street by man with whom he had
quarreled.
Vinna (Bowers) Helstern, tape-recorded remembrances 1989
#3SDavid Wineland: “Driving home from Annual Conference one time, through Illinois, my Dad [Harvey Bowers] pointed to a building and said ‘The man that shot your grandfather was in that building.’ I said ‘I thought he was from Ohio, because his father’s grave is up here near Versailles.’ It seems that this grandfather David Wineland was a young man in Montgomery County in the years just preceding the Civil War. Pictures indicate that he was quite a handsome young man; seems to have been a very vocal person and he became a member active in the Copperhead movement ... a group who opposed the election of Abraham Lincoln because they knew that if Lincoln was elected there would be war... A man by the name of Vallandingham who was in Canada as an exile who was running for president in that election and this group of young men was working for his election.... then Lincoln was elected. My father never wasted words: ‘After Lincoln was elected, your grandfather found it better to leave Montg. Co.’
And he left, leaving relatives here, and started west, stopping in the vicinity of Springfield IL area. Information we have seems to indicate that he was a carpenter and a day laborer. He met and married Elizabeth [Susanna] Stutzman; the Stutzmans were in the Pleasant Hill church, an early, active Brethren church in central IL. The Stutzmans had moved there shortly after the Civil War....
They had 6 children, my mother [Rhoda Stutzman Wineland] was the youngest [by far]. The mother of the family died of ‘consumptive tuberculosis’ and my mother [Rhoda] was about 4 when she died. Her sisters were [eventually] married; her brothers took off for other parts. But he seems to have kept my mother with him.
“Newspaper clipping from courthouse in Springfield. After his wife’s death, David Wineland took to drinking a little heavily. The clipping indicates that one day he and his daughter were walking and he got into a quarrel with the saloon-keeper. One had sold a hog to the other; they were accusing each other of cheating... in the argument, it appears from the paper that David Wineland pulled a gun and shot the guy. The man lived for some weeks or months, but he died. It appears – partly from legend and partly from the clipping – that he had told a foster sone to get even. The time came when again David Wineland was walking on the sidewalk with his daughter and the foster son of the man who had been shot came up behind him, shot him and killed him....
“How could David Wineland have been out on the street that soon after being responsible for the death of a man? He had been put in jail...[but he was out.]"

Jessica DULL Sievers has downloaded from court records of Macoupin County, IL several newspaper reports of David Wineland's killing of the storekeeper. She also has provided print copies of the word by word testimonies of witnesses of that event. She holds the original of these print copies and MarySue HELSTERN Rosenberger has copies in storage.

Burial

Ancestry.com records include the following note attached to David Wineland's gravestone:
"Believed to be a 'replacement' headstone. Cannot confirm date or 'donor' but believed to have been provided by grandson E. Harold Wineland about 1970-1980. g k wineland"