Candace Wellman

Candace Wellman's third book will be published by Washington State University Press in Spring, 2023. Man of Treacherous Charm: Territorial Justice Edmund C. Fitzhugh is the biography of an upper-class Virginia lawyer who migrated to the California Gold Rush. In Washington Territory, he was instrumental in forming the Democratic Party, established a militarily critical coal mine in 1854, and was appointed to the territorial supreme court while under indictment for murder. His life spanned the nation, a treaty war and the Civil War. He also left four wives and six children in his wake and it is their story as well.

Her first book, Peace Weavers, won the 2018 WILLA Literary Award for scholarly nonfiction from the national organization, Women Writing the West. Their members are librarians, academic and independent scholars, novelists, poets, and essayists.

The companion volume Interwoven Lives (WSU Press, 2019), was a 2020 WILLA Literary Award Finalist in scholarly Nonfiction.

While helping researchers at the Washington State Archives, Candace Wellman discovered that about 90 percent of all marriages in the early decades of Whatcom County (Washington) were cross-cultural. The husbands included nearly every county official and military officer. Yet when she studied the written chronicles, only white women were mentioned as founding mothers. It seemed many historians considered the indigenous women to be unknowable, unimportant, and uninteresting. She became determined to illuminate the hidden history surrounding these relationships. Producing her first two manuscripts required eighteen years and close to two hundred collaborators.

An expert in research methods, sociology, history, and genealogy, Wellman began by re-scrutinizing old sources and searching for new ones, particularly legal cases. Focusing on cross-cultural couples, she found evidence that, except in rare cases, local and regional historians stereotyped and ignored the Frontier West’s intermarried women. Peace Weavers and Interwoven Lives challenges their viewpoint and Wellman hopes that her efforts will inspire others to re-examine the historical role played by these relationships.

Most research for Man of Treacherous Charm was done at the same time as that for the first two books. It will be the first full biography of a Washington Territory federal judge. As the first two books did, it will illuminate not only a man's full life, but also the political climate of his time that would lead to his appointment and short trial for murder with his fellow judges presiding.

Wellman holds a B.A. in Sociology from Washington State University and a B.Ed. in History/Secondary Education from Western Washington University, and has pursued graduate work in sociology. Born and raised in Washington, the Bellingham resident is a local history consultant and speaks regularly about women’s history and regional settlement.