| Abstract: |
The Wade family was a prominent nineteenth and early twentieth century Cleveland, Ohio, family with business interests in
the telegraph and railroad industries, mining, manufacturing, and banking. Jeptha Homer Wade spent his early life as an apprentice
to a tanner and as a carpenter. He next turned his interest to the emerging telegraph industry. In 1849, he organized the
Cleveland and Cincinnati Telegraph Company. In 1857, Wade moved to Cleveland as the Western Union Telegraph Company's first
general agent. His business interests were extensive in Cleveland, including the Cleveland Rolling Mill Company and the Citizens
Savings and Loan Association. Randall Palmer Wade worked with his father in the telegraph business, moving with him to Cleveland
in 1857. His business interests included the Cuyahoga Mining Company; the Citizens Savings and Loan Association; the Cleveland
Banking Company; the American Sheet and Boiler Plate Company, and the Chicago and Atchison Bridge Company. Jeptha Homer Wade
II also worked in the telegraph industry; he later joined the banking community in Cleveland. He was an active philanthropist,
serving as a trustee of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Western Reserve University, Adelbert College, and the Cleveland
Museum of Natural History. He was an incorporator of the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1913, and later established a purchasing
fund for the Museum. The collection consists of correspondence, wills, diaries, autobiographical sketches, memoranda, deeds,
contracts, drawings, financial records, passport documents, land grants, notes, receipts, newspaper clippings, and scrapbooks,
relating to Jeptha Homer Wade and his role in the telegraph industry in the Midwest, and to his son, Randall Palmer Wade,
and grandson, Jeptha Homer Wade, Jr. Includes letters from or about Ezra Cornell, Amos Kendall, Samuel F.B. Morse, and James
A. Garfield. Personal correspondence related to members of the Wade family, including Ellen Howe Garretson Wade and Ellen
Howe Garretson, is included, as is travel journals written by various family members. The Wade family interest in spiritualism,
particularly that of Jeptha Homer Wade after the death of his son Randall in 1876, is well documented in his personal correspondence.
A calendar of correspondence for the collection is available in the appendix to the register.
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