St. John's Cemetery Individual Record

[No Photo]J. Dennis   Capt. Wolfe

J. Dennis Capt. Wolfe
(December , 1821 -- May 26, 1897)

Section: 5
Space: 1
Lot: 13
Spouse: Mary C. Brownlee
Place of Birth: West Virginia
Military: Civil War
Occupation: Law
Area: 1

As a former Union Army captain, lawyer and fiery newspaper editor he was a colorful Pensacola character in the post-Civil War era

Submitted by J. Earle Bowden, editor emeritus of the Pensacola News-Journal and Pensacola author. Used with permission of the Pensacola News-Journal.

The antique front page of the March 5, 1889 Daily News framed in the News Journal's lobby echoes through time as the newspaper than silenced the "poison pen" words of gun-toting, former Union Army captain and lawyer J. Dennis Wolfe. Progressive editor of Pensacola's Daily Commercial, Wolfe battled a regiment of Pensacola enemies in the post-Reconstruction 1880s, chief among them railroad builder, mayor and state senator William Dudley Chipley, whose Plaza Ferdinand VII obelisk shadows the ground where Wolfe's great hero, Andrew Jackson, exchanged Spanish colors for the American flag in 1821. Wolfe now rests in St. Johns Cemetery, his only monument the long-forgotten toxic editorial barrage against Chipley that spawned the birth to the newspaper you're reading. Wolfe who led Maine Regiment company of African-American troops during Pensacola's Federal occupation, was branded a "carpetbagger." Yet he greatly admired Jackson, saying some of Pensacola's ex-Confederates were too dumb to know that Old Hickory is now dead.

Yet Wolfe, emulating Jackson, fought duels, engaged in a street shootout and in fisticuffs on Pensacola streets. He was shot at more than once, and carried a loaded, easy-trigger Navy Colt by his side while traveling by buggy on Pensacola streets. Shying away from Carpetbaggers and registering as a Democrat, Wolfe is admitted to the Florida bar.

Wolfe counted among his enemies, Florida Gov. Edward A. Perry, a Massachusetts native, Pensacola lawyer and former Confederate brigadier general; Stephen Russell Mallory, Confederate Navy secretary; and Chipley, former Confederate lieutenant colonel who built the Pensacola & Atlantic Railroad.

After the Civil War, Wolfe and several of his army friends, among them Mayor Sewell C. Cobb, stayed in Pensacola. Wolfe pushed for imprisoning Geronimo at Fort Pickens as the city's first tourist attraction. When the Apache and his fellow captives arrived in 1886, Wolfe's Commercial began a bonanza of headlines and stories in hot competition with the Pensacolian. The editor of Milton's Santa Rosa Press suggested that Geronimo be kept in Wolfe's office so he would be the first scalped.

Lawyer Wolfe found himself engaged in and 1869 gun battle with Escambia County Judge William Kirk at the corner of Palafox and Intendencia streets. Kirk had forbid Wolfe from practicing in his court. Crossing paths on Palafox in front of a store operated by Jasper and Viola Gonzalez, the angry Kirk who had no love for Northerners drew his pistol and fired at Wolfe; both men emptied their revolvers. Wolfe scrambled inside the Gonzalez store; Kirk kept firing and Wolfe retreated on Palafox Street. Kirk's friend, Raymond Knowles, handed the judge his own pistol, and the jurist continued firing at the fleeting lawyer. None of the gunshots hit either man, but Kirk and Wolfe met again�in the courtroom, where the county judge was charged with intent to commit murder. Trial witnesses vented anger at Wolfe, dubbing his a "liar" and "carpetbagger." The jury found Kirk innocent.

Yet it was Commercial Editor Wolfe's poisonous editorial vendetta against Chipley and railroad power, coupled with Chipley's political ambitions to become a U. S. senator, that led John O'Connor, founder of the rival Pensacolian, and John C. Witt and a group of Pensacola businessmen in January 1889 to organize the News Publishing Company. Pensacolians read the first Daily News on the morning of March 5, 1889, a four-page, $5-a-year newspaper produced by a 10-person staff in the Armory Hall at the corner of Palafox and Intendencia Street.

The Daily News, blessed with a high percentage of advertising, led to Wolfe's welcomed retirement. Then, by 1898, the News had its own competitor, Frank L, Mayes' Pensacola Journal. By then Wolfe was mellowing into old age, his many Jackson-emulated exploits and poisonous pen that had drew enemies by the hundreds have gone into the hellbox of frontier newspaper history; yet he was reading what would become in the 1920s the News Journal.

He is buried in St. John's Historic Cemetery 1 North, Section 5  +++++++++++++++++++++

The seven known children of J.D. and Mary Wolfe were: William Wylie Wolfe (1853-1916;buried 1-12), Jeannie (b.ca1855), Minnie E. Wolfe (1856-1941; married David Rutherford),  Agnes (b.ca1858-1922; married O.E. McReynolds),  J. Emmett Wolfe (b.ca1860), Elmer Ellsworth Wolfe (1861-1938).  In obituary of son Wm W. Wolfe, there were four girls and three boys: Emmett Wolfe is listed as a Judge in Miami; sister Mrs. L.A. Eakins of Mobile, Mrs. Jennie Leggett of Joplin, Missouri.  Capt. J. Dennis Wolfe died May 26, 1897, buried next to his wife  Mary C. Brownlee Wolfe,  son Elmer Elsworth Wolfe and his wife Mary Emma Gabel Wolfe (one stone), daughter Minnie Eva Wolfe Rutherford and her husband David Blair Rutherford, Crystal Wolfe Kenney, Agnes Wolfe McReynolds and her husband O.E. McReynolds.  There is a tall monument for Capt. J. Dennis Wolfe and his wife Mary C. Brownlee Wolfe.  Their stone has ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’.

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