Wendell, Cornelius

Born: 1813-02-20 Albany, New York

Died: 1870-10-09 Northampton, Massachusetts

Cornelius Wendell, a printer, aided in the establishment of the Detroit Free Press and the Albany Atlas. He served as a government printing contractor in Washington, DC, from 1846 to 1861. From 1846 to 1850, Wendell was printer of the U.S. Congress, and from 1856 to 1857, he was printer of the U.S. Senate. In 1856, Wendell erected and fitted up a new building in the Washington, DC, to serve as the first government printing office. Wendell purchased the Washington Union, a paper that supported President James Buchanan and his administration, in 1857, and in 1858, Stephen A. Douglas verbally attacked Wendell in the second Lincoln-Douglas Debate in Freeport for supporting Abraham Lincoln's run for U.S. Senate, calling him the "most corrupt of all corrupt men." Unable to profit from the paper, Wendell transferred ownership of the Union to Gen. George W. Bowman in 1859. In 1860, Wendell owned real property valued at $125,000 and had a personal estate of $75,000.

Wendell married Mary Hinckley and the couple had five children.

American Dictionary of Printing and Bookmaking (New York: Howard Lockwood, 1894), 577; Monmouth Democrat (Freehold, NJ), 20 October 1870, 2:4; 100 GPO Years 1861-1961: A History of United States Public Printing (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961), 26-27, 43, 161; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 4, District of Columbia, Washington, DC, 275; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 3 September 1858, 2:2; Illinois Daily State Journal (Springfield), 29 April 1861, 1:2; Gravestone, Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, DC.