Biography
William "Bill" Wheeler was an architect of the July 8, 1845 Port Tobacco Mass Escape, in which some 40 to 70 enslaved people of Charles County, Maryland staged a coordinated daylight escape and reached Rockville before armed white mobs surrounded them. Tried alongside Mark Caesar in 1845, Wheeler was imprisoned at the Port Tobacco jail; the Maryland legislature passed a special law to ensure his life imprisonment should he escape execution. He ultimately escaped from the jail and was never recaptured.
