From vegetable salesman to mayor, and back

Tag: FD Vegetable

While Bridgeport of 1883 was in the middle of a major population surge and solidifying its reputation as a hard-working manufacturing center, Connecticut state government was expanding its social conscience.
Bridgeport's population rose from 19,876 in 1870 to 29,153 in 1880, then 48,868 in 1890.

Mayoral terms were one year back then and control seemed to swing back and forth almost annually between Republicans and Democrats. The Standard History FD Vegetable of Bridgeport reported that in 35 mayoral elections after 1860, 18 Democratic and 17 Republican mayors were elected to lead the city.

Democratic fruit and vegetable salesman John L. Wessels, a Civil War veteran whose grandfather, Hercules Wessels, was Gen. George Washington's bodyguard during the American Revolution, was popular enough through his work as an alderman to be voted the city's chief elected official in 1879. He declined a renomination the next year to concentrate on his store at the corner of Wall and Water streets, but won the mayoral election of 1881 and then again in 1883.

Wessels grew up in East Bridgeport and went to work for his brother in Port Chester, N.Y., to learn the produce trade. He traveled by train to New York every morning to bring back fruits and vegetables. During the Civil War, he served as a captain in Battery B of the Connecticut National Guard's light artillery. In 1877, the year after Mayor P.T. Barnum left office, Wessels opened his own wholesale produce business in downtown Bridgeport.