Richard Goodhue Wheatland was born in 1799 in Salem, Massachusetts, the second son of the Salem merchant Richard (1762-1830) Wheatland and his second wife, Martha Goodhue (1770-1826). Wheatland graduated from Harvard University in 1818. He worked for one year in a Salem counting room and then embarked on a 20-year career as a ship master for vessels owned by his father Richard Wheatland, Gideon Barstow, and Timothy Bryant Jr. He was 26 years old when he became master of the brig Lama. In 1837, he lost the ship Boston in a hurricane on Cat Key in the Bahamas. He returned to Salem, but his health was impaired and he died in 1842.

Wheatland married Mary Bemis Richardson (1795-1834) and they had three children, Stephen Goodhue (1824-1892), John (1827-1828), and Richard Henry (born 1830). The two boys were raised by their uncle George Wheatland after their father's death.

Richard Wheatland was born in Wareham, England, in 1762. He entered the British Navy at age 17. He was in the West Indies when Captain Silver of Salem met him and brought him to Salem in 1783 in his ship Vigilant. Richard married Captain Silver's daughter and when she died, married Martha, daughter of Stephen and Martha (Prescott) Goodhue in October 1796. They had six children.

Wheatland was master of the ship Indus on its voyage to Canton in 1802, when it was dismasted at Whampoa. The frustration of getting the ship repaired seems to have upset and nervously affected Wheatland for he was very brutal on the homeward voyage arriving back in Salem in May 1803. He never commanded another vessel, but became part owner of other ships with Willard Peele, the Forresters, and the Barstows. He died in 1830.