J. H. Wade organized the Western Union Company and lives in Cleveland

Two of the Millionaires of Cleveland.

Correspondence Philadelphia Press.

J. H. Wade, who organized the Western Union Telegraph Company, and was for a long time its President, lives on the nabob side of Euclid Avenue, at the corner of Cass, and has a lawn filled with statuary. That big house next door belongs to his grandson built for him by Wade at a cost of $100,000, and that read granite mansion which is going up over there he is now building for his granddaughter.

A SPIRITUALISTIC CROESUS

When Wade's son died a few years ago, it almost broke his heart, and, spiritualist that he is, he now hold communications with him through the medium of the telegraph. A man told me the other day that Mr. Wade supports a medium named Charles Watkins and that he lets him have a house on Woodlawn Avenue and gives him an allowance to use in evangelizing the neighborhood. In payment of this he requires only one condition, and that is that he be granted a séance every Sunday morning between 11 and 12 o'clock.

At this time the millionaire comes to the house of the medium with a little ivory sounding telegraph instrument in his pocket. The medium puts his finger on this and goes into a trance, whereupon the ghost of Mr. Wade's son speaks to his father though the medium's fingers, answering his father's questions and conversing with him generally. Wade himself is an expert telegrapher, but it is said that medium knows nothing about the art, Mr. Wade's wife is a Unitarian, and she makes her husband give liberally to the church.

J. H. Wade, now over seventy years old, is a self-made man, and started life as a carpenter's apprentice. As a boy he made musical instruments and played the church organ. At twenty-one he had learned his trade and had become the owner of a sash and blind factory, and three years later he had left this and struck out for Michigan as a portrait painter. Here he learned photography, but during a sickness he turned his attention to telegraphy, then in its infancy, became an expert operator, and began to undertake contracts to build telegraph lines.

He put up some of the first telegraph lines in Ohio and Michigan, and was the first to advise the railroads to use separate wires. He invented the Wade insulator, which immediately came into general use, and for a time everything he touched seemed to turn into gold. He resigned from the Western Union in 1867 on account of overwork, but he still keeps a large amount of its stock, and he is interested in many of the business enterprises of Cleveland. When he came West he wasn't worth $1,000; now his check is, they say, good for a million any day in the week.

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