John Hill Wheeler (1806–1882) was an American attorney, politician, historian, planter and slaveowner. He served as North Carolina State Treasurer (1843–1845), and as United States Minister to Nicaragua (1855–1856).
Wheeler gained national attention as a central figure in an 1855 legal case that tested the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Pennsylvania was a free state, and enslaved Jane Johnson and her two sons walked away from Wheeler in Philadelphia, while he and his family were en route to New York City and a voyage to Nicaragua.[1] Passmore Williamson, the abolitionist who aided her in claiming her freedom, was charged with a federal crime and held indefinitely in prison. Johnson was hidden in Pennsylvania and Boston, and returned to Philadelphia to testify at trial.
Hannah Bond escaped from Wheeler's North Carolina plantation about 1857, and settled in New Jersey. She came to prominence in 2001–2002, when historian Henry Louis Gates authenticated a novel, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts. She later legalized her pseudonym Hannah Crafts in honor of the Quaker farmer, Horace Crafts, who secreted her in his attic as Wheeler’s bounty hunters were about to apprehend her. The book revealed her connection to Wheeler.[2] Her actual name was documented in 2013.[3]
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