after Ellen's early death in 1858. When his hardware store burned in 1851, Wheaton built C.A. Wheaton & Co.—housed in the city's grandest mercantile block, a four-story building overlooking the Erie Canal and Clinton Square. In 1852, the Wheatons were at the peak of their wealth. They moved to Fayette Park, one of the city's most fashionable neighborhoods. Wheaton sold his share of the hardware business in 1853. He also sold the Wheaton Block for $112,000, the largest sale to that date in Syracuse. He invested heavily in a printing press foundry. He also invested in a project to build a railroad from South Carolina to Tennessee. In 1854, a banking crisis and an economic depression struck New York. By 1855, the family were broke. Ellen died suddenly at age 42 on December 17, 1858, the day after the wedding of their eldest daughter Cornelia. Her funeral was a Swedenborgian service and she was buried in Hilltop Cemetery in Pompey, New York. Abolitionist and political activities The Wheatons were part of a large network of abolitionists in Syracuse and knew John Brown personally. Their anti-slavery activities began as early as 1838, when Wheaton helped found the First Congregational Church in Syracuse. He and other pro-abolition supporters left the First Presbyterian Church, which would not take a position against slavery, to found the new congregation. Many of its members worked as activists. Between 1839 and 1847, the Wheatons operated their house as a station on Underground Railroad, helping escaped slaves travel to Canada. His public reputation as an abolitionist was such that the family seamstress, a Mrs. MacManus, was said to have reported to a census taker that Wheaton was "president of the Underground Railroad." In a notable case in 1839, Syracuse abolitionists helped the slave Harriet Powell to escape from her masters, a family from Mississippi who were staying at a local hotel. Officials suspected Charles Wheaton of being involved. Local law enforcement officers searched the Wheaton's home for Powell without success. She made it to Canada. Wheaton was one of 600 people in Syracuse who signed a call for a meeting at the Syracuse City Hall on May 16, 1850, to discuss the proposed Compromise of 1850. Participants supported the admission of California as a free state, opposed territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah that did not prohibit slavery, opposed any fugitive slave law, and supported abolition of