[1][2] Chadwick was born in Searsport, Maine, and educated in nearby Gardiner and Farmingdale.
At the age of 17 he became state editor of The Daily Kennebec Journal of Augusta, Maine.
[1][2] A year after arriving in Seattle, Chadwick married Laura M. Castle, originally of Washington, D.C.
[1][2] In 1894 he resigned from the Press-Times to take on a half interest in the Argus, which A. T. Ambrose had founded six weeks earlier.
[1][2] He continued to write almost up to the moment of his death: the morning after he died while on vacation on the Olympic Peninsula, two envelopes arrived at the Argus offices containing a travelogue of his last journey.