Susan Ann Okley Wade    

SUSAN ANN WADE, widow, died at 414 Third Avenue, New Brighton, on June 18, 1907, in her 94th year, the family of her maternal ancestors had been at that time residents of the borough continuously for 110 years, and some of them are still in business there. Her mother was a daughter of Isaac Wilson who built the noted brick house in 1817.

After a romantic courtship John M. Okley, a wealthy Baltimore Merchant, journeyed to the Beaver Valley prior to 1813 and married Isaac Wilson’s daughter, Alisanna, and the couple made their wedding trip to Baltimore by horse back, where Mrs. Wade was born in 1814. The war of 1812 injured Mr. Okley’s business, so at the close of the conflict they joined the wife’s Quaker relatives in New Brighton. Later they became residents of Harmony, Pennsylvania, where they lived in the former home of Father George Rapp, founder of the Harmony Society.

In the Rapp house on a day in 1834, Susan Ann Okley became the bride of Isaac E. Wade, who was a member of the firm known as the Ft. Pitt Iron Works at Pittsburgh. They went to housekeeping in that city and remained there until the husband’s ill health necessitated a change of climate. He did not improve but died at Austin, Texas, in 1850. His widow then came back to New Brighton where she spent the remainder of her life—57 years. (Isaac E. Wade’s birthday was October 13, 1807.)

The couple were blessed with three children, Charles I. Wade, Isaac E. Wade, Jr., and Lois Wade. Charles I. Wade was a bank cashier in Pittsburgh, and the father of two children, E. Lois and C. W. Wade. The latter was born in 1866 and is living in California. E. Lois died in 1872. Charles I. Wade became the husband of Elizabeth (Wilkinson) Wade, remembered by the older generation as “Bessie Bramble,” the brilliant woman columnist on the old Pittsburgh Dispatch. She died about 1915. Charles I. was born in 1838 and died in 1917. The second son, Isaac E. Wade, Jr., was born in 1846, and was married in 1883 to Florence Reddington, and for many years was in the office of the Pennsylvania Rail Road at Pittsburgh. Surviving the couple who are both dead is a daughter, Justine, wife of Charles A. Palmer of Montreal. Lois Wade, who never married, but took care of her mother all her life, was born September 11, 1835. She was an accomplished musician and for years served as organist at St. Joseph’s R. C. Church. She died on April 3, 1923, and is buried beside her mother in St. Joseph’s cemetery.

History of New Brighton 1838-1939, published by the Historical Committee of the Centennial, Butler, PA, pages 56-57. More Beaver County History Books  Search Hundreds of 1880s-1890s Pennsylvania County History Books for biographies and historical information on your ancestors.  View the book page images on line and print them out for your genealogy file! Free Access to the old history books - plus birth & death records, census images and ALL other records at ancestry.com