University of Virginia Library

CHARLES WILLIAM WADE

Charles William Wade, the subject of this sketch,
was born in Roanoke County, Virginia, August 6th,
1860, and was one of nine children born to Thomas
Isaac and Fannie
Catherine (Chaffin)
Wade. His grandfather,
A. Jackson Wade,
settled in Roanoke
County in the foot-hills
of the mountains west
of Cave Spring, several
years before the Civil
War. When the war
broke out he enlisted in
Company E, Thirty-Sixth
Virginia Volunteer
Infantry. He was
wounded during the war
and afterwards died at
Pearisburg, Virginia.
His son, John
Wade, an uncle of the
subject of this sketch,
was also killed while fighting for the Confederate cause.
He was a member of Company E, Forty-Second Virginia
Regiment, known as the "Dixie Grays." James
N. Wade, another uncle served throughout the war,
and returned to Roanoke County. He enlisted at the
age of sixteen years, and now resides at Norfolk, Virginia.

In his boyhood the parents of Charles William Wade
removed to Rockbridge County and later to Lynchburg.
After attending the public schools he was employed
by John P. Pettyjohn, a general contractor with
whom he learned his trade. With the completion of
the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, he came to Roanoke
and assisted in the building of the first fifty houses,
constructed by the Roanoke Land & Improvement
Company. He made the straight edges used by the
stone masons in laying the foundations for the Roanoke
Machine Works. For a period of seventeen years he
was with the Norfolk & Western Railway as hotel
carpenter and inspector. In 1905 he resigned his
position with the railroad and began general contracting.
A year later he formed a copartnership with Levi
C. Rhodes and has since done a general contracting and
building business, under the firm name of Rhodes &
Wade.

Since that time Mr. Wade has superintended the
construction of the new passenger depot at Bedford
City, the West End Offices of the Norfolk & Western
Railway, the fine residences of A. G. Crosby, H. M.
Darnall, W. H. Hayes, E. G. Orell, and others.

On March 26th, 1884, he married Sallie V. Eubank,
daughter of George H. and Catherine Virginia Eubank
of Lynchburg, Virginia. To this union three children
were born; namely, Julia Edna, married to R. C.
Elliott; Clyde Preston; and Annie Bryan, married to
George H. Davies.

Fraternally he is a member of the Knights of Pythias,
and religiously a communicant of Greene Memorial
Methodist Church.

The parents of Charles William Wade died in Lynchburg,
Virginia, and both were buried in the same grave
on Christmas Day, December 25th, 1885.