[3] cause of education alone had exceeded the sum of ninety thousand dollars.
His wife, the mother of General Wadsworth, who is said to have been a most intelligent and amiable woman, was Naomi Walcott, of Windsor, in Connecticut, one of a family of importance in the history of that State.
This was the stock from which he sprung, and he proved his descent by the intrepidity and vigor of his character, as well as by that frank courtesy of manners and princely generosity which always distinguished him.
He received the first rudiments of his education at the common schools of Geneseo, although much of his youth must have been given to those rough employments in the open air which the border-life of those days required, even of the sons of rich fathers. Some of his friends in New York remember him well when he was a boy of twelve or thirteen, and made a visit to the city in company with his uncle William. They had come all the way on horseback, driving a herd of cattle; and Wadsworth was then a hardy, vigorous stripling, intelligent, manly, and self-possessed.
He entered Hamilton College, near Utica; but after a short residence there went to Harvard, where he remained a longer time, but never graduated. About the year 1829 he became a student of law at Yale College, where he stayed a few months, and then continued his course with Mr. Webster at Boston, and finished it in the office of McKeon and Deniston at Albany. He was in due time called to the bar, but he never practised law as a profession. He preferred to assist his father in the care of the family estate, which had been increased by the property devised by his uncle William, who died a bachelor in 1833.
Wadsworth was married about this time to Miss Wharton of Philadelphia. They went abroad soon after their marriage, and upon his return Wadsworth applied himself with great spirit and success to agricultural affairs. In 1842 he was elected President of the State Society, and he always manifested a lively interest in its prosperity. He repeatedly took
