Topic: Achievement

My Paternal Great Grandfather Frederick Wentworth Wade (1838-1912) was the first of his family to settle in New Zealand, and the first and as far as is known only person in the family to profess Law.

His father Robert Wentworth Wade (abt 1795-1870) was a schoolmaster in Dublin. As the fifth of nine children born between 1832 and 1848, he would doubtless have had to make his own way in the world.

He may have joined the Royal Navy or have signed on as a seaman in a merchant ship, but either way he turned up in Melbourne, Australia in the late 1850s and before long found work as an accountancy clerk. In 1862 he went to Invercargill at the bottom of New Zealand, where he soon became a clerk and then partner-accountant in a firm of Carriers. He was said to have had a remarkable faculty for dealing with figures. By 1863 he was an articled clerk to a Law firm, and was admitted to the Bar as a Solicitor and Barrister in 1869.

After various terms in partnership with other lawyers he set up on his own, always in invercargill. Apart from the usual legal business in 1878 he defended a notorious wife murderer. He was president of the NZ Law Society in 1884-85.

After his death it was said by his fellow members of the Bar that he was endowed with fine intellectual talents and was a particularly strong advocate who took a keen interest and part in public matters, with a genial manner which endeared him to many, and he always conducted his cases in a fair and honourable way. The Supreme Court adjourned for one afternoon to allow members of the profession to attend his funeral.

One obituary said he experienced to the full ups and downs “…such as seldom come to the lot of one man…” and predicted that Wade’s passing would prompt many old identities to let loose a flood of reminiscences “… which perhaps have never been unearthed previously”.

Sadly no photograph of him can be found.