Augustus Ogden Wellman, assistant treasurer of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company, Topeka, Kan., was born in Brookline, Mass., a suburb of Boston, Dec. 19, 1854. His father, William Augustus Wellman, was the Boston representative of Baring Brothers, the well known London bankers, for fully twenty-five years, and also served as deputy collector of that port of Boston for about eighteen years. He was born in Salem, Mass., and died in Brookline, that state, when seventy-eight years of age. Timothy Wellman, his father and the grandfather of Augustus O., was a ship owner and a soldier in the war of 1812. The mother of Augustus O. was Matilda Gouvernier Ogden, the daughter of Samuel Ogden, a lawyer of New York City, and was a direct descendant of Francis Lewis, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. She died in Brookline, Mass., in 1901, at the age of seventy-six. The Wellman family originally came from England, and there possessed a coat-of-arms. The maternal ancestry of Mr. Wellman is also of English descent.

Augustus Ogden Wellman was reared in his native city of Brookline. He graduated in the Brookline High School and later from the Waltham Academy, of Waltham, Mass. At the age of twenty-two years, or in 1876, he became a policy clerk in the offices of the Revere Life Insurance Company of Boston. In 1880 he came westward to Omaha, Neb., where he became cashier of the Burlington & Missouri River railroad in Nebraska, a part of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system, but in 1881 he returned to Boston, where he became the secretary of Thomas Nickerson, at that time president of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad, with headquarters at Boston. He was transferred to Topeka in 1882, and placed in charge of the accounts in the office of the secretary and treasurer of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company, and has been in the continuous employ of that company in the secretary and treasurer's offices from that time to the present, a period of twenty-eight years, the last four of which he has held his present position, that of assistant to the secretary and treasurer.

Mr. Wellman has been twice married. The first marriage, in 1880, united him with Miss Ida Walker Poindexter, of Chillicothe, Mo., who died in 1895. He was married to his present wife on Aug. 18, 1897. She was Miss Ethel Celeste Watson, of Topeka, where she was born, Dec. 5, 1876. By his first wife Mr. Wellman has one daughter, Miss Myrta Gouvernier, who is a graduate of the Topeka High School. Mr. Wellman is very prominently identified with Masonry, being a Thirty-second degree Sottish Rite Mason, a Knight Templar, and a Noble of the Mystic Shrine. He is a past master of his blue lodge, past high priest of his chapter, past thrice illustrious of his counsel, past eminent commander of his commandery, and is a past grand high priest of the Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of the State of Kansas. At the present time he is the grand junior warden of the Grand Commandery of the Knights Templars of the State of Kansas, and is chairman of the finance committee of the Grand Lodge. He is a member of the Elks Club, the Commercial Club, and the Country Club, all of Topeka.