Wolfe was ed­u­cat­ed at Wil­liams Coll­ege (1844) and the Un­ion The­o­log­ic­al Sem­in­ary, New York (1848-1851). On Ap­ril 9, 1851, he was li­censed by the Third Pres­by­tery of New York. He ran a young la­dies’ school in Tal­la­has­see, Flor­i­da (1852-55), and in 1859, es­tab­lished the Hill­side Sem­in­ary for Young La­dies in West Bloomington (now Mont­clair), New Jer­sey. In 1858, he con­trib­ut­ed se­ven hymns, un­der the sig­na­ture “A. R. W.,” to Church Mel­o­dies, by Thomas Hastings. He re­tired in 1872.

The devout spir­it of the man is fit­ting­ly il­lus­trat­ed by the ac­count he once gave his friends of an in­ci­dent which shaped his af­ter-ca­reer some­what ser­i­ous­ly. When he left Flor­i­da in the sum­mer of 1855 he put all his ef­fects—li­bra­ry, notes, and things of that sort—on board a sail­ing-ves­sel at St. Mark’s, and with a sim­ple grip­sack re­turned North by way of Nash­ville and Chi­ca­go. Reach­ing New York af­ter some two weeks spent in jour­ney­ing, he sought his goods at the com­miss­ion house to which they had been con­signed. There he learned that, on the day ap­point­ed for sail­ing, the vess­el had been struck by light­ning, the mate killed at the foot of the mast, and the vess­el, la­den with tur­pen­tine, burned to the wa­ter’s edge. Books, pa­pers, notes, ev­ery­thing of past trea­sure had gone up in smoke. He looked up­on this as a spe­cial pro­vi­dence of God, shap­ing his life, and fix­ing his home. For it made him a teach­er of the young rather than a pas­tor of a church; and soon the way was opened for the be­gin­ning of one of the most use­ful en­gage­ments with Dr. Ab­bott, and so his life was fa­shioned…Thus the Lord made up his pet­ty loss­es by a rich re­ward.

Sources

Hymns

1. Complete in Thee, No Work of Mine
2. Draw Near, O Ho­ly Dove, Draw Near
3. How Blest Indeed Are They
4. My God, I Thank thee for the Guide
5. Mysterious Influence Divine
6. Parting Hymn We Sing, A
7. Thou Maker of Our Mortal Frame