Wardwell, Charles P. S.

Charles P.S. Wardwell, a New Hampshire inventor. He was born ca. 1824 in Oxford Co., Me., son of Joseph H. and Lydia Wardwell. In the early 1850s he moved to Lake Village, N.H. In 1854, 1855, 1858, and 1862-1863, he patented various tenoning machines and circular sawing machines. During the Civil War, he worked at the Springfield Armory (Mass.). He was the founder of the C.P.S. Wardwell Company and in in the 1878, he was the owner of The Wardwell Needle Co. in Lake Village, N.H. An 1879 patent granted to Charles P. S. Wardwell noted that he was deceased.

His elder brother George J. Wardwell had worked as a painter and tried his had at farming before moving to Canada and taking a job at Page's Oar Factory at Coaticook, Quebec (1859). His other brother, Jarvis traveled to California and in 1852 was working at a mine in Deer Creek. He then returned to New England and in 1861 worked in Boston for James Boy & Sons "on Harness work for Government." Joseph W. Wardwell worked at a mill in Oneida, N.Y. in 1863, and in 1864, enlisted in 7th unassigned Company of Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, which was organized for garrison of forts in Boston Harbor, and later attached as company C to the 3rd Massachusetts regiment of Heavy Artillery. After the war, in 1867, he worked at Springfield Armory. His brothers William H., Nathaniel, and Spafford H. Wardwell and his sister Sarah E. (Lizzie) Wardwell Farnum (d. 1858) lived in Rumford, Me.