Foremost on the roll of those who have won a distinguished position in the telegraphic history of the West, is the name of Jeptha H. Wade, until recently president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and who still, although compelled by failing health to resign the supreme executive control, remains on the Board of direction, and is one of the leading spirits in the management.

Mr. Wade was born in Seneca county, New York, August 11, 1811, and was brought up to mechanical pursuits, in which he achieved a fair amount of success. Having a taste for art, and finding his health impaired by the labors and close application consequent on his mechanical employment, he, in 1835, turned his attention to portrait painting, and by arduous study and conscientious devotion to the art, became very successful. Whilst engaged in this work, the use of the camera in producing portraits came into notice. Mr. Wade purchased a camera, and carefully studied the printed directions accompanying the instrument. These were vague, and served but as hints for a more careful investigation and more thorough development of the powers of the camera. By repeated experiments and intelligent reasoning from effects back to causes, and from causes again to effects, he at length became master of the subject, and succeeded in taking the first daguerreotype west of New York.

When busy with his pencil and easel taking portraits, and varying his occupation by experimenting with the camera, news came to him of the excitement created by the success of the telegraphic experiment of building a line between Baltimore and Washington. This was in 1844. Mr. Wade turned his attention to the new science, studied it with his accustomed patience and assiduity, mastered its details, so far as then understood, and immediately saw the advantage to the country, and the pecuniary benefit to those immediately interested, likely to accrue from the extension of the telegraph system which had just been created. Without abandoning his devotion to art, he entered on the work of extending the telegraph system. The first line west of Buffalo was built by him, between Detroit and Jackson, Michigan, and the Jackson office was opened and operated by him, although he had received no practical instruction in the manipulation of the instruments. In the year 1848, an incident occurred, which, though at the time he bitterly deplored it as a calamity, was, in fact, a blessing in disguise, and compelled him perforce to embark on the tide which bore him on to fame and fortune. He was an operator in the line of the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, at Milan, Ohio, when a conflagration destroyed all the materials and implements forming his stock in trade as a portrait painter. After a brief consideration of the subject, he decided not to replace the lost implements of his art, but to cut loose altogether from the career of an artist, and hereafter to devote himself solely to the business he had entered upon with fair promise of success.

[Illustration: Very Truly Yours, J. H. Wade]

The first years of telegraph construction were years of much vexation of spirit to those engaged in such enterprises. Difficulties of all kinds, financial, mechanical, and otherwise, had to be encountered and overcome. There were those who objected to the wires crossing their land or coming in proximity to their premises, fearing damage from the electric current in storms. Those who had invested their capital wanted immediate large returns. Some of those who had to be employed in the construction of the lines were ignorant of the principles of electrical science, and their ignorance caused serious embarrassments and delays. Defective insulation was a standing cause of trouble, and telegraphers were studying and experimenting how to overcome the difficulties in this direction, but without satisfactory result. In the face of all these difficulties, Mr. Wade proceeded with the work of extending and operating telegraph lines. In addition to the interest he had secured in the Erie and Michigan line. he constructed the "Wade line" between Cleveland via Cincinnati, to St. Louis, and worked it with success. The "House consolidation" placed Mr. Wade's interest in the lines mentioned in the hands of the Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, and before long this consolidation was followed by the union of all the House and Morse lines in the West, and the organization of the Western Union Telegraph Company. In all these acts of consolidation the influence of Mr. Wade was active and powerful. Realizing the fact that competition between short detached lines rendered them unproductive, and that in telegraphing, as in other things, union is strength, he directed his energies to bringing about the consolidation, not only of the lines connecting with each other, but of rival interests. The soundness of his views has been proved by the unremunerativeness of the lines before consolidation and their remarkable prosperity since.

Mr. Wade was one of the principal originators of the first Pacific telegraph, and on the formation of the company he was made its first president. The location of the line, and its construction through the immense territory--then in great part a vast solitude--between Chicago and San Francisco, were left mainly to his unaided judgment and energy, and here again those qualities converted a hazardous experiment into a brilliant success. Mr. Wade remained president of the Pacific Company until he secured its consolidation with the Western Union Telegraph Company, to accomplish which, he went to California, in the latter part of 1860, and succeeded in harmonizing the jarring telegraphic interests there. On the completion of this consolidation, Mr. Wade was made president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, his headquarters being in Cleveland.

At a meeting of the Board of Directors, in July, 1867, a letter was received from Mr. Wade, declining a re-election to the office of president. The following resolutions were unanimously adopted by the Board:

Resolved, That in receiving the letter of J. H. Wade, Esq., declining re-election to the presidency of this company, we cannot pass it to the officiai files without recording our testimony to the distinguished service he has rendered to the general system of American Telegraphs, and especially to the company whose management he now resigns.

Connecting himself with it in its earliest introduction to public use, and interesting himself in its construction, he was the first to see that the ultimate triumph of the telegraph, both as a grand system of public utility, and of secure investment, would be by some absorbing process, which would prevent the embarrassments of separate organizations.

To the foresight, perseverance and tact of Mr. Wade, we believe is largely due the fact of the existence of one great company to-day with its thousand arms, grasping the extremities of the continent, instead of a series of weak, unreliable lines, unsuited to public wants, and, as property, precarious and insecure.

Resolved, That we tender to Mr. Wade our congratulations on the great fruition of his work, signalized and cemented by this day's election of a Board representing the now united leading telegraph interests of the nation, accompanied with regrets that he is not with us to receive our personal acknowledgements, and to join us in the election of a successor to the position he has so usefully filled.

Office of the Western Union Telegraph Company, New York, July 10th, 1867.

William Orton, President. O. H. Palmer, Secretary.

As before mentioned, Mr. Wade remains a director and leading spirit in the Board, where his suggestions are listened to with respect and acted on without unnecessary delay. In addition to his connection with the telegraph Company, Mr. Wade is heavily interested in several of the most important manufactories, in the railroads, and in the leading banks of Cleveland. The wealth he has accumulated is mostly invested in such a manner as to largely aid in building up the property of Cleveland, a city in which he feels a strong interest, not only from the fact that it has been for the past twenty years his place of residence, but that the wealth enabling him to enjoy the beautiful home he has secured there, was made in Cleveland.

It has already been noted that Mr. Wade, when a painter, took the first daguerreotype west of New York. Soon after his entering upon the business of telegraphy, he put into practice, for the first time, the plan of enclosing a submarine cable in iron armor. It was applied to the cable across the Mississippi, at St. Louis, in 1850. Weights had been applied to the previous cables, at regular distances, on account of the sand, change of bottom, drifts, and other difficulties that interfered with the safety of the cable. Mr. Wade conceived the idea of combining weight and protection in the cable itself. He constructed it with eighteen pieces of wire, placed lengthwise around the cable, and bound together with soft iron wire at intervals. While the spiral cordage of hemp, such as was used at that time on the cable from Dover to Calais, would stretch, and allow the strain to come on the cable itself. This invention caused the strain to come on the armor. It was a complete success, and lasted until the line was abandoned. Mr. Wade also invented, in 1852, what is now known as the Wade insulator, which has been used more extensively, perhaps, than any other.

Among the strong points in Mr. Wade's character, is his readiness and ability to adapt himself to whatever he undertakes to do. The evidence of his common sense, business foresight and indomitable perseverance, has been proved by the success attending the various pursuits in which circumstances have placed him. Finding, in early manhood, his mechanical labor undermining his health, he turned his attention to portrait and miniature painting, to which he applied himself so close that after a dozen years or more at the easel, he was compelled to abandon it and seek more active and less sedentary pursuits. Having so long applied himself to painting--the business of all others the most calculated to disqualify a man for everything else--but few men would have had the courage to enter so different a field, but Mr. Wade seemed equal to the task, and with appropriate courage and renewed energy grappled with the difficulties and mystories of the telegraph business, then entirely new, having no books or rules to refer to, and without the experience of others to guide him, and having, as it were, to climb a ladder, every round of which had to be invented as he progressed. But nothing daunted him. Through perseverance and system he succeeded, not only in supplying the United States in the most rapid manner with better and cheaper telegraphic facilities than has been afforded any other country on the globe, but in making for himself the ample fortune to which his ability and energy so justly entitle him. And when care and over-work in the telegraph business had made such an impression upon his health as to induce him to retire from its management, and give more attention to his private affairs, he was again found equal to the emergency, and has proved himself equally successful as a financier and business man generally, as he had before shown himself in organizing and building up the telegraph speciality.