WADSWORTH, JOSEPH HENRY (b. June 18,
WADE, RICHARD M. (b. May 11, 1816, Campbell Co., Va.; d. February 19, 1878, Covington, Ky.). Richard Marshall Wade, a steamboat captain in the commercial trade between Cincinnati and New Orleans, was the son of Edmund and Mildred Marshall Wade and a great-grandson of U.S. Supreme Court chief justice John Marshall of Virginia. Richard Wade’s mother died when he was 5 years old. His father lost his fortune when Richard was 16 and moved his family to Kanawha, Va. (modern W.Va.). Richard then went to work to help support his family. He commanded a fleet of salt boats on the Kanawha River at age 17. In 1839 he married Sara Jane Reno, daughter of Lewis Reno, a prominent Cincinnati citizen. They moved to Pike St. in Covington in 1842. Wade was the pilot of the sternwheeler New Orleans from 1834 until 1844. Between 1844 and 1861, he served sequentially as captain and master of the Duchess, the Europa, the Swallow (lost in a collision), the Cincinnatus, the Queen of the West, and the Judge Torrence. He was part owner of the Queen of the West, which became a ram boat during the Civil War, and the Judge Torrence. In 1862 Captain Wade joined the Union Army as a volunteer and served as executive officer on the gunboat Carondelet. He took part in the military campaigns at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee. His health declined while serving on the Carondelet and he was discharged in April 1862; he never returned to good health. From 1867 to 1870, he was captain of the General Lytle, the U.S. Mail Line (Cincinnati Mail Line) Cincinnatito-Louisville ser vice, and temporary captain or master of the United States in 1868. Wade’s and another river pilot’s confusion in signals on a foggy night resulted in the collision of the United States and the America on December 4, 1868, at Warsaw, causing the loss of 74 lives. As a result, both pilots had their licenses revoked. Wade’s career continued as captain (but not as pilot) of the Robert Mitchell, the St. James, and the Bostona. He was made superintendent of the U.S. Mail Line in 1874, a position he held until his death from consumption in 1878 at age 62. He was buried at Linden Grove Cemetery in Covington. His wife, Sarah Jane, was a founder of the First Presbyterian Church in Covington. They had 12 children. “Account of the Collision of the America and the United States,” S and D Reflector 5, no. 4 (December 1968): 18–22. “Death Notice,” CDE, February 20, 1878, 5. “Death Notice,” CE, February 20, 1878, 5. Linden Grove Cemetery Records, Covington, Ky. “Pioneer Dying,” KP, June 24, 1905, 2.
Marja Barrett
1903, Maysville, Ky.; d. December 5, 1974, New York City). Actor Joseph Henry Wadsworth was the son of John Gray and Ida Power Wadsworth. He grew up in the family’s large ancestral home, Buffalo Trace, built by his grandfather, Adna Wadsworth. After graduating from Maysville High School in 1921, Joseph attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He studied acting at the Carnegie Institute of Technology’s drama school in Pittsburgh, Pa. Using the stage name Henry Wadsworth, he appeared on the Broadway stage, in movies in Hollywood, and on television. He played several juvenile roles in films in the early 1930s, becoming known as “the perpetual juvenile.” Wadsworth first appeared on Broadway in 1927 in the title role of Howard Lindsay’s Tommy. Two years later, he made his movie debut in Applause as a sailor on leave in New York City. The two bestknown films in which he appeared were The Thin Man and the Oscar-winning It Happened One Night, both released in 1934. His last film appearance was in the 1943 production of Silver Skates, and his last Broadway appearance was in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1950 musical The Happy Time. After World War II, Wadsworth traveled to Japan to entertain American troops stationed there. During his acting career he also served as administrator of the Motion Picture Health and Welfare Plan and as president of the American Federation of Labor Film Council. Late in life, he turned to designing theater costumes while living in New York City. During summers he returned to his childhood home, Buffalo Trace. Wadsworth died in New York City in 1974 and was buried in the Maysville Cemetery in Maysville, Ky.
1860. During the campaign, Wadsworth worked vigorously and helped stir up Union sentiment in the state so that Kentucky’s electoral votes went to Bell rather than to native-born John C. Breckinridge, standard-bearer of the Southern Democrats. With the Civil War approaching, supporters of the Union nominated Wadsworth to run for the 37th Congress in 1861 from the Maysville District, and he won handily. In Washington, D.C., he was a conservative Union man who supported the compromise proposals of fellow Kentuckian John J. Crittenden and opposed what he considered the coercive policies of Abraham Lincoln’s administration and Congress toward the South. Yet he accepted the war, while wanting to ameliorate its destructiveness, and even served for a time in the Union Army. Bearing the rank of colonel, he was an aide to fellow Maysvillian Gen. William “Bull” Nelson at the Battle of Ivy Mountain and also served under generals Green Clay Smith and Lew Wallace. Wadsworth was reelected to the 38th Congress in 1863. After the war, he returned to the practice of law, though now supporting the Republican Party. In the presidential election of 1868, he campaigned for Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who had been his schoolmate at the Maysville Seminary. As president, Grant appointed Wadsworth to an important commission that adjudicated millions of dollars worth of claims between the United States and Mexico. Wadsworth returned to politics when he was elected to the 49th Congress in 1884 but did not run again in 1886. He was serving as general attorney for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company in Kentucky upon his death in 1893. He was buried in the Maysville Cemetery.
Calvert, Jean, and John Klee. Maysville, Kentucky: From Past to Present in Pictures. Maysville, Ky.: Mason Co. Museum, 1983. ———. The Towns of Mason County: Their Past in Pictures. Maysville, Ky.: Maysville and Mason Co. Library Historical and Scientific Association, 1986. “Henry Wadsworth, Stage, Film Actor,” NYT, December 7, 1974, 32. Maysville Public Ledger, December 6, 1974, 1.
Biographical Cyclopedia of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Chicago: John M. Gresham, 1896. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–2005. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2005. Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky. Cincinnati: J. M. Armstrong, 1878.
Thomas S. Ward
In fall 1889 Harry A. Wadsworth, along with two partners, J. H. Stegeman and H. Remke, built the first Wadsworth Watch Case Company factory, a two-story structure at the southeast corner of Jefferson (modern Sixth St.) and Overton Sts. in Newport. In January 1892 the company incorporated, dissolving its former partnership structure. Within a few years it earned a national reputation for its gold-filled watch cases. During the 1890s the watchcase manufacturing operation moved to a nearby building, formerly the home of the Dueber Watch Case Company, Newport’s first nationally recognized watch case company, at Fift h St. and Washington Ave. After it had operated in Newport for about a decade, rumors began to circulate that the company would be moving out of state; but instead, in November 1899, it moved to Dayton, Ky., and made watch cases in part of the former Victoria Cordage Company complex, a ropewalk business, at Fift h and Clay Sts. At first the Wadsworth
WADSWORTH, WILLIAM HENRY (b. July 4, 1821, Maysville, Ky.; d. April 2, 1893, Maysville, Ky.). Lawyer and legislator William Henry Wadsworth was the son of Adna A. and Mary Williams Ramsdell Wadsworth. He began his schooling at Tuckahoe Ridge in Virginia, then continued at the Maysville Seminary (Maysville Academy), and finally graduated with honors in 1842 from Augusta College in Augusta. He was admitted to the bar in 1844 after studying law in the office of Thomas Y. Payne and Henry Waller. He married Martha Morehead Wood. In 1853 Wadsworth was elected to the state Senate as a Whig. He lost his bid for reelection in 1856 to a candidate of the American Party who had the support of many Democrats. He ran as an elector for the Constitutional Union Party’s candidates, John Bell and Edward Everett, in the momentous presidential election of
Thomas S. Ward
WADSWORTH WATCH CASE COMPANY.