"My father, Archibald Wheeler, cut two trees, a black oak and a poplar where the courthouse in Columbia now stands. They were the first trees cut in Adair County*, and out of one of them he caught seven 'coons. The same night his dogs treed a bear on Pettit's Fork, which was shot and killed by old man Billy Hurt." He further stated, "my father died in 1864 at the advanced age of 98 years. At the time of his death he was the oldest Mason in Adair County."

*There had been trees cut in Adair County prior to this to build cabins and stations, but perhaps these were the first cut upon what is now known as the Public Square of Columbia, and the site of the county's proposed new courthouse.