Background
Eliot Wadsworth was born in Boston, Massachussets, the son of Oliver Fairfield Wadsworth and Mary Chapman Goodwin.
Eliot Wadsworth was born in Boston, Massachussets, the son of Oliver Fairfield Wadsworth and Mary Chapman Goodwin.
He attended Hale's School in Boston and received the B. A. degree from Harvard University in 1898.
After graduation Wadsworth worked briefly for the Planters' Compress Company in East Boston and then joined the electrical engineering firm of Stone and Webster in Boston, becoming a partner in 1907. He retired at the end of 1916 because of pressing war work, but continued on the board of directors. Wadsworth spent considerable time in Russia and eastern Europe between 1914 and 1916 in his work for the European Relief Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Red Cross. In 1916, Wadsworth began a lifelong connection with the Red Cross, when he accepted appointment as vice-chairman of the Central Committee, a post he held until 1919. He served as a member of the Central Committee from 1921 to 1942, as national treasurer from 1921 to 1926, and as chairman of the Retirement Board from 1937 to 1956. He represented the United States at Geneva in 1929, at the Conference for Rewriting the Red Cross Convention and in the drafting of the new Prisoners of War Convention. In 1919, Wadsworth became chairman of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Endowment Fund, helping to raise $15 million dollars within two years. He served as president of the Harvard Alumni Association from 1920 to 1926. He also sat on the Board of Overseers of Harvard for twelve years, becoming president of the board in 1929. As assistant secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1925, during the administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Wadsworth represented the United States at the Paris conference in 1923 to discuss costs of maintaining American forces in Germany. He also served as secretary to the World War Foreign Debt Commission from 1923 to 1925, in particular, negotiating with the British regarding their debt refunding agreement. Wadsworth was a member of the Massachusetts legislature from 1926 to 1932 and chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Sinking Fund for the City of Boston from 1926 to 1929 and from 1934 to 1940. From 1933 to 1939 he was president of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, also acting as director of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States from 1934 to 1940, and as chairman of the American section of the International Chamber of Commerce from 1937 to 1945. In the fall of 1930, President Herbert Hoover sent Wadsworth to Santo Domingo to investigate conditions after a major hurricane. Hoover also appointed him, in 1931, as chairman of the Committee on Cooperation with National Groups and Associations within the president's Organization on Unemployment Relief, an effort to fight the Great Depression. In 1932, Wadsworth represented American investors on the League Loans Commission in London. In the 1940's he was treasurer and trustee for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and in 1950 President Harry S. Truman appointed him a member of the Loyalty Review Board of the Civil Service Commission, a post he retained until 1953. Wadsworth died in Washington, D. C.
On July 10, 1922, he married Nancy Whitman Scull. They had one daughter.