Fredrick Wheeler
1811 - 1910
From the Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, Volume 10, page 1584, 1976. Review and Hearld Publishing Association. Used with permission.
WHEELER, FREDERICK (1811-1910). Pioneer SDA minister, reputed to be the first ordained Adventist minister to preach in favor of the seventh-day Sabbath. Not much is known of his early life or experience, except that about 1840 he was an ordained minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church and became its circuit rider in the vicinity of Washington and Hillsboro in New Hampshire. In 1842 he became acquainted with the Millerite views and thereafter was active in the propagation of the Adventist views. As later he reported, he became convinced that the seventh-day Sabbath was sacred through personal study he had undertaken some time in March, 1844, after a discussion with Mrs. Rachel Oakes (later Preston) a Seventh Day Baptist of Washington, New Hampshire. He preached and farmed in the neighborhood of his home until 1851, when he met James White, who invited him to go farther afield with his ministry. In 1857 he moved to the State of New York, and in 1861 settled on a farm near West Monroe.