Leander Wetherell was born in Massachusetts around 1805. He was a teacher at the Rochester Collegiate Institute in New York between 1840 and 1853, and associate editor of Moore’s Rural New Yorker . He then moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, where he edited the Amherst (Mass.) Record until 1859. Between 1859 and 1876, he was the editor of the American Cultivator, and later of the Boston Post and Traveller . He received an honorary M.A. degree from Williams College. He died in 1885 and was survived by his wife Mary.
From the guide to the Leander Wetherell letters, Wetherell, Leander letters, 1847-1896, (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)