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Senate Years of Service: 1851-1855; 1855-1857; 1857-1869 Party: Whig; Opposition; Republican
WADE, Benjamin Franklin, (brother of Edward Wade),
a Senator from Ohio; born in Feeding Hills, near Springfield, Hampden County,
Mass., October 27, 1800; received his early education from his mother; moved with his parents to
Andover, Ohio, in 1821; taught school; studied medicine in Albany, N.Y., 1823-1825; returned to
Ohio; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1828 and commenced practice in Jefferson, Ashtabula
County, Ohio; prosecuting attorney of Ashtabula County 1835-1837; member, State senate
1837-1838, 1841-1842; judge of the third judicial court of Ohio 1847-1851; elected as a Whig to
the United States Senate to fill the vacancy in the term commencing March 4, 1851, caused by the
failure of the legislature to elect; reelected as a Republican in 1856 and 1863 and served from March
15, 1851, to March 3, 1869; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1868; served as President
pro tempore of the Senate during the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses; chairman, Committee on
Territories (Thirty-seventh, Thirty-eighth, and Thirty-ninth Congresses); unsuccessful Republican
candidate for the vice presidential nomination in 1868; resumed the practice of law in Jefferson, Ohio,
in 1869; appointed a government director of the Union Pacific Railroad; member of the Santo
Domingo Commission in 1871; died in Jefferson, Ashtabula County, Ohio, on March 2, 1878;
interment in Oakdale Cemetery.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Shover, Kenneth. The Life of Benjamin F. Wade.
Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1962; Trefousse, Hans L. Benjamin
Franklin Wade: Radical Republican from Ohio. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1963.
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