He was the seventh of a family of eight children and though his early environment and home life were no different from that of other boys who lived at that time, Charles was different. This difference manifested itself at a very early age, to the extent that it was even then a subject for discussion among the members of his family.

      Charles Page’s parents, like most pioneers of this country, were sturdy, honest Christian people. His mother, Mary Ann Gottry, was a native of Alsace Lorraine, whose family came to this country when she was eight years old. She spoke both French and German, as well as English. James W. Page, his father, was of French-Scotch parentage, rather sever and puritanical, and the children were brought up with the simple, but enduring faith of that generation.

      When Charles was eleven his father died, after a year’s illness, and the boy then became practically the head of the family, as the older children, except William, who had been killed in the Civil War, were nearly all married and no longer lived at home with their parents. Some of the older children asked their mother to come live with them but she preferred to stay in her own home, with the two little boys, and she soon learned to depend entirely on Charles to take care of the little family of three, because even at that age, he seemed perfectly capable of carrying burdens that would have daunted many men. Not only was he able to, but he also seemed more than willing to take care of mother and younger brother, Edwin.

      He didn't say very much, but he must have thought about it a lot from what he said to his mother one day shortly after his father’s death, when she seemed particularly disheartened and discouraged over their hard lot. The weather was cold and dreary and Charles had come into the kitchen with an armful of wood. He was standing by the stove, warming his chilled hands while he alternately kicked his cold feet against the wood box to warm them, when he noticed that his mother, who was doing the family washing, was silently crying as she bent over the steaming tub of clothes.

      Charles seemed older than his years when he put his arms comfortingly around her, for he was taller than his mother, but it was with the words of a child that he expressed his thoughts when he said to her, “Mother, don’t cry. Wait until I get to be a man! I will take care of you and you won’t have to work and I will take care of all other mothers and poor boys and girls, too!”

      Charles’ schooling stopped and his work often took him away from home, but when his mother was by herself, she kept his father’s old hat hanging in the kitchen so tramps would thank there was still a man in the house.

      There was little work that a boy so young could do, but he became dispatch boy at the Wisconsin Central Railroad Depot, where he also learned telegraphy, though not well enough to take a station. But he worked hard, did odd jobs and was constantly on the alert for anything that would bring in money and if there were no jobs to be had he usually made one by investing what money he had accumulated in some venture. One winter he trapped rabbits, then sold the pony he had used in delivering messages and bough sever head of cattle which he managed to sell at a fair profit.

      As he grew older, he went from one kind of work to another, which carried him father and farther away from home. Not all of his experiences are easily followed, but they were nearly always interesting and full of the adventure men encountered when they wrestled with the difficulties of that era. And he was possessed of two ambitions—first, to make money; second, to use that money for the benefit of the “down-and out.”

By Josephine T. Hughes
Mrs. Hughes served as a secretary to Charles Page from 1922 until his death on December 27, 1926, after which she because secretary to the Board of Trustees.

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