Named after Alphonse de Lamartine, the French poet and historian, who sprang into such wonderful popularity during the French Revolution of 1848.
Born in Lamartine, Wisconsin, Wells lived in Vermont 1858-1862, but moved back to Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin; Wells went to University of Chicago, but did not graduated, He moved to Waupaca County, Wisconsin where he was principal of a school in Manawa, Wisconsin and then moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where he was a superintendent of public schools.
Lamartine, Wisconsin, formerly called Seven Mile Creek or Seven-Mile-Creek
Nor is this eminence merely due to his great opportunity in 1870; for Guizot might under Louis Philippe have almost made himself a French Robert Walpole, at least a French Palmerston, and Lamartine's opportunities after 1848 were, for a man of political genius, unlimited.
His father Ralph Lamartine Newbery, emigrated from Long Island, New York, and settled in Argentina after the American Civil War (in which, supposedly, he took part at the Battle of Gettysburg).
While in Paris, Rusinian audited courses on literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne, and was influenced by the ideas of Lamartine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Victor Hugo, and other political philosophers.