Daniel Wadsworth was born of a Quaker family in Winthrop, Kennebec County, Maine on May 15, 1799. He married in December 1823, Margaret F. Goodwin, a native of Freeport, Maine, and settled in Hallowell, in the same state. They have raised one son and three daughters, all of who are yet living. Several children died in infancy. Mr. Wadsworth spent the winter of 1839-1840 in Mobile, Alabama, working at this trade of carpenter, and in the following spring he came up the river to Sangamon County, Illinois, stopping at Auburn, where the family of an old Maine friend, David Eastman, lived. He bought a small piece of land, worked through the summer, returned home in the fall, sold his Maine property, packed up, and started in October for the far West, as Illinois was then called. The goods were sent by ship around to New Orleans, and thence to Alton. The family was a little over three weeks en route, much of the journey [through the middle states] having to be made by canal.

Mr. Wadsworth built him a home on South Street, Auburn [old town] into which he moved in in 1843, and still resides there – the only building left within the limits of the town. The venerable pair, one eight-two and the other eighty, with an unmarried daughter, constitute the household.

Mr. Wadsworth is one of the oldest Masons in Illinois, having taken the Chapter degrees about sixty years ago. He had been a very active and zealous member of this order, and generally an officer. From his early manhood, he has been a faithful and consistent member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was a postmaster at Auburn for ten years; has repeatedly held school offices, and has been Notary Public for several years.