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My father, when working at a Lancaster newspaper in the 1940's, came across an interview with one of his ancestors in an old paper while doing research in the paper's morgue. It said that the Wade founder, he believed the name was Timothy, had come to America from Ireland. There he had been a professor at Dublin University, and killed a British tax collector. He fled to America, where he married a Conestoga Indian named Bright Waters. He served in the Civil War, enlisting three times for the bounty paid by wealthier men who wished to avoid being drafted. Each time he was wounded, mustered out, and returned to enlist again. He spent time in Andersonville Prison, with a friend from Conestoga who had been there as well. My father had the book by that friend. After the war he had become a Justice of the Peace of Lancaster County.
By 2001, after my parents had passed on, the Internet had grown to the point where it was possible to do some research into my background on-line without going to Pennsylvania. I soon discovered that much of my father's story could not be substantiated. I did have an ancestor, Noah Wade, who served in the Civil War (in fact, it was my father's grandfather - two long generations). He did serve twice in the Union Army, and he did receive a pension, but he took part in no major battles and was never at Andersonville. There was an uncle who was a sheriff for the county, but not in my direct line. Any ancestor beyond Noah could not be identified. It seemed that perhaps my father's story was a tall tale (one of many he told - ever see the film Big Fish?
In 2006 I read about the possibility of (relatively) low-cost genetic testing for genealogical purposes. I tried it, and was astounded - my haplotype was R1b1c7, and my closest matches were all from a small area of northwest Ireland. It seems my father's story may have been true after all. I began genealogical research on-line again, and found that much more was available and searchable than five years earlier. The intertwined stories of the last of the Conestoga Indians and what were called the "Scots-Irish" immigrants provided a strong historical underpinning for my family legend. However records on Wades in Lancaster County were spotty in the early days, and it did not seem possible to get a definitive answer that linked the names together.
I finally used a thorough, brute-force statistical approach to try to understand the relationships of the Wades of Lancaster County of the 18th and 19th Centuries. A patterns, based on locality and religion, emerged. I finally settled on what seemed a best-fit to my situation. In the process, I unearthed quite a bit on the various Wade strands in Lancaster and York counties. These pages document that information for the benefit of others.
A Brief Background on Wades in England and Ireland
Wade Name Origin
Wade is of Saxon origin and one of the oldest English names, already recorded there in baptisms before the Norman Conquest in 1066. It derived from the Anglo-Saxon word wad, meaning a meadow or ford, and the verb wadan, to ford a river or go through a meadow. The earliest use of the word as a name is in Germanic mythology. The father of the Anglo-Saxon hero Weland was called Wada; in Old Norse, Vadi, in Old High German Wado; and in Danish Wate. The Widsilh, an old Anglo-Saxon poem, has been dated to AD 433-440. The poem states that Wada ruled over the Helsings, a Scandinavian tribe that are remembered in the city name Helsingfors. The Brothers Grimm claimed that Wada's name was based on his having waded, with his son on his shoulders, through the 16-feet-deep Groenasund between Seeland, Falster and Moen. This pagan story may have been transferred to the Christian legend of Saint Christopher carrying the infant Jesus on his shoulders. The Milky Way was called Waetlingastret by the Saxons, perhaps in reference to this or another of Wada's exploits. The name still exists today as Watling Street in London.
Wades in England
Chaucer mentions Wada in his Canterbury Tales: And eke thise olde widewes (God it wote). They conhen so moch craft on Wades bote... Other allusions to Wade's boat abound in English literature. This Anglo-Saxon Wade was a familiar folk-hero to the British until the 17th Century, being mentioned by many authors in passing, with the assumption that the reader is familiar with the story. In another example, Thomas Mallory in the Morte d' Arthur puts Wade in the same league as mighty Arthurian heroes: ...for were thou as wight (brave) as ever was Wade, or Sir Launcelot, Sir Tristram... However no writer bothered to record the actual story of Wade, and the legend behind these references was forgotten and lost forever by the 18th Century.
By the 16th Century local legends had transformed Wade from a mythological being to a legendary Scot or Pict leader that forced a break in Hadrian's Wall in Roman times. There was indeed a chasm through the wall known as Wadesgapp. Various Wade's castles and other places litter the English landscape, allusions to local stories of the exploits of legendary Wades. For example a Roman road in York was called Wade's Causeway, supposedly built by the hero for the convenience of his wife in traveling across the moors to milk her cow (the gigantic rib of which - a whale's rib - was there for all to see by the road).
Saxon Wades emerge into history with a revolt led by a Wade in April 798. After murdering King Aethelred, Wade and his fellow conspirators were defeated in a battle near Whalley in Lancashire. Farther south, in 854 an Earl Ealchere and a Duke Wade fought a battle against pagans on the Isle of Thanet, in Kent .
In the Domesday Book a Wade is named as a tenant, probably a Saxon, holding land before the survey. Wado, Wadolo, Wadel, Wadellus and Wadele are also names recorded. Wadellus held land near Wadefaste and Wadesbridge, in North Cornwall. But it was as place-names that Wade appears most often in the Domesday book. These are spread throughout the country, so the name cannot be localized to a specific area of Britain. These names may allude to the mythological Wade; legendary or historical local figures of the same name; or simply to local wades (fords) across rivers.
By the 11th Century. mentions of individuals named Wade become numerous (see below). By the 13th Century the number of Wades proliferates beyond counting - while not one of the sixty most common English names, it was not rare.
Wades in Ireland
It is certain is that the name Wade in England is of Teutonic or Scandinavian origin (or both). It is not Celtic. Conventionally it is therefore assumed that its use in Ireland came though the invasion of that country by English soldiers. Records disclose a Captain Wade there under Cromwell and Samuel Wades Senior and Junior as officers of the army in 1649. Sir William Waad, died 1623, was Superintendent of the soldiery in Ireland. Bryan Wade, Henry-Wade, Samuel Wade and Major William Wade are recorded as recipients of extensive grants of Irish lands in Cork, Kerry, Meath, Tipperary, Limerick, Waterford and Kings Counties in the 17th Century. In 1702 Richard Wade, Charles Wade, and John Wade are mentioned as land owners.
But this conventional explanation of the appearance of the Wade name in Celtic areas of Scotland and Ireland seems hard to accept in view of the large number of Wades that are already living there by the time of the 18th Century, and the widespread use of the name among the Catholic Irish inhabitants. It seems more likely that use of the name in Ireland and Scotland dates back to antiquity. Note the association of the name with Hadrian's Wall and the Picts. The Danish occupation of northern Britain may also have brought the name to Scotland before the 11th Century. Scottish and Danish occupations of Ireland could also have brought it there, and made it widespread, well before the 17th Century. Alternatively, the name could simply have been adopted as a surname by Irish serfs from their British masters.
Wades in America
Wades emigrated to America in the earliest settlements (Jonathan Wade at Charlestown Massachusetts in 1620; and Edward, George, and John Wade in Virginia from 1635). Additional Wades emigrated to the New World continuously from Ireland and England over the centuries. These were all unrelated individuals, as shown by DNA testing in the 21st Century. Of 23 individuals with the Wade surname recorded in the ydna database as of May 2007, not one pair has a DNA match indicating common ancestry. Immigration figures prior to the 19th Century are scanty; but about 2/3 came from Ireland; most of the rest from England; a few percent from Scotland; and a few percent from Germany (most of the German Wades were female, spouses with different maiden names. However a small percent were Germans with the original surname Weide, meaning barn, eventually anglicized to Wade). Available census data shows a shift from Ireland to England as the source of new Wade immigrants by 1930:
Wades appear in Pennsylvania from the very founding, already being present in Maryland and Virginia. A Robert Wade was host to William Penn on his first visit to what would become Pennsylvania in 1682.
A major immigration route into Ohio and the interior of North America through Pennsylvania was up the Susquehanna River valley from Baltimore. The two counties on either side of the Susquehanna as the river entered Pennsylvania were York and Lancaster. Occasional records show Moravian, Mennonite, and Catholic Wades in Lancaster County from the earliest part of the 18th Century. Some of these were already recruited in the Old World as missionaries. Others came as part of the 'Scots-Irish' migration of Pennsylvania. Those arriving in lower Lancaster County were settled there for specific strategic reasons. Samuel Evans, in his "History of Lancaster County" (1883), points out that:
Scotch-Irish first entered this region in 1715, and, pushing past the Mennonite and Huguenot settlements, located themselves on Chiguss creek. A few years later a cordon of settlements by these people, who were all Presbyterians, had been made and extended along Octorara Creek from Sadsbury to the Susquehanna, and thence along the river to the Conestoga. These people had been encouraged by the authorities to settle near the disputed boundary line between Maryland and Pennsylvania, because it was believed that they would be more disposed and better able to defend the settlements against the Catholic Marylanders than would either the Huguenots, the Friends, or the Mennonites.The main focus of settlement by Wades from the early 1700's to 1850 were around the Elizabethtown/Mount Joy in northern Lancaster county, and the Earl/Lancaster townships in south-central Lancaster County, with just one family at Lower Chanceford in York County between 1810 and 1850.
These Wade families may be split by location and religion into two groups:
A John Wade appears in the Lancaster 1771 tax roll. Consistent tracking of the family begins with the 1790 census and some wills from 1817. The relationships of the persons mentioned in the records are not always known. The identifiable lineages and persons are as follows:
His widow Mary Wade, born in 1772, appears in the census for Earl and Strasburg in 1830 to 1850. An online genealogy gives further information: her maiden name, Mary Heisch, and identifying a daughter, Susannah Wade. Susannah was born 23 February 1810 in Martic township, and died 11 May 1899 in Strasburg Township. She married Benjamin Shaub and lived in 1860 in Conestoga - providing a possible connection to the York County Wades, who moved to Conestoga in 1850. Mary was buried in a Mennonite Cemetery, further linking this family with the Wades from York.
So, pending further information, a possible family tree of these Lancaster Wades would be as shown here.
The early 11th-12th century references to Wade include:
My Internet Pages:
Encyclopedia Astronautica
The Cid Home Page
F-20 Tigershark Home Page
Wade Geneology
W Haplogroup Home Page