Captain's descendants savor connection to river

BY LEW MOORES
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dr. Bob Wade, of Canton, and granddaughter Abbey Sanderson, 4, of Hartville, Ohio. (Yoni Pozner photos) Click to zoom

On Saturday, more than 60 of them walked aboard the Creole Queen for a cruise on the same river.

Tall Stacks '99 is both a reconnection with the culture of river life and a reunion, and that theme ex tended on a personal level to members of the Wade family.

Last November, one member of the family, Orin Wade, discovered that his great-uncle, Capt. Richard Wade, had been a steamboat captain and was master of a boat called Queen of the West on the Ohio River in the 1850s.

The steamboat eventually was purchased by the government and converted to a ram boat during the Civil War. But Capt. Wade remained

active, becoming a Union gunboat pilot and commanded the Carondelet during the Battle of Memphis.

Marja Wade Barrett and her brother, Bob Wade, did further research, then passed along the information to other family members. Ms. Barrett thought to incorporate the river theme and history into this year's family reunion.

“When we found out all of this, we decided this definitely had to be part of our family reunion,” Ms. Barrett said. “We were going to do a Tall Stacks reunion anyway.”

Wade family members on the Creole Queen. Click to zoom

Ms. Barrett's brothers, Henry and Jim, came in from Little Rock, Ark.; brother Bob came down from North Canton, Ohio. Orin Wade and about a dozen other family members came up from Texas.

Aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins, not all known to one another. Since the last family reunion in 1996, six babies have been born into the family, and there have been four or five marriages.

They boarded the Creole Queen, a 190-foot stern-wheeler here from New Orleans for the festival, and took a smooth ride upriver, following about 200 yards behind the Celebration Belle and passing the Tom Sawyer as that boat headed downriver.

The oldest aboard the Creole Queen was Dr. Bob Wade at 73; the youngest, Ryan Karcher, was born Aug. 2. About 20 of the family members still live in the area.

They know of no photographs that exist of Capt. Wade. Any thought of subsequent careers on the rivers probably ended with Capt. Wade's death in 1878, when the railroad had already begun hauling goods across the country, effectively ending the steamboat era.

They recall some riverboat experiences from childhood, when the brothers lived in Bond Hill and caught the old Island Queen from the Public Landing and rode it out to Coney Island.

“It was a legend, that boat,” said Henry Wade.

“I remember it had a hardwood dance floor,” said Bob Wade. “You would take a picnic basket, go down to the Public Landing and its cobblestones, and climb up this big gangplank.”

Saturday, much of the family was aboard a riverboat. Youngsters in the family watched as the Creole Queen's paddle wheel dug into the Ohio. Others reconnected, mostly with family, and with history.

“When families become scattered, they're still seeking that connection with each other,” said Ms. Barrett. “They find out they're not out there alone, knowing this history and having a certain reverence. Like with Captain Wade. That's our history.”