Charles Elias Warner

Charles Elias Warner, second of the eight children of Eleanor Amelia Martin and John Warner, was born 6 November 1872 in Martintown, Green County, WI, the village founded by his grandparents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader. Named for a pair of uncles, his father’s youngest brother Charles Warner and his mother’s eldest brother Elias Martin, he was often known affectionately as Charley (or Charlie). He grew up mainly on acreage along the north bank of the Pecatonica River, on the fringes of Martintown, not far from his grandparents’ residence. The eighty-acre Warner farm was land that Nathaniel and Hannah had given their daughter Nellie as a dowry gift upon her marriage to John. The only time during his childhood that Charley resided elsewhere was during the mid-1880s when the household was located in Willow Springs, Howell County, MO, where his father was employed for a year or so helping Nellie’s brother-in-law Cullen Penny Brown get a lumber mill established.

Charley came of age just as Martintown was hitting its boom period. The railroad arrived in 1888, while he was still fifteen, and by local standards it was an exciting period. Charley seems to have had a deep sense of community and home. Among his other activities, he played in the Martintown brass band, which in that bygone era of no television, no automobiles, and no internet meant a great deal, because the band was a vital component of major social events such as parades and community dances. (The image of him at upper left is cropped from a photo of him with the rest of the band -- to see the full image, click here to go to the page devoted to Martintown, and scroll down. The image of him to the right and slightly down was taken during his boyhood; the original was a tintype, hence the dark grey tones. The image was taken the same day as the tintype of his brother John shown in John’s biography.)

Though he was a handsome young man, Charley did not acquire a wife. Nor did he marry later in life. Because he never had to split his affections between his birth family and a spouse and children of his own, he became the son upon whom Nellie Martin Warner depended most, and who was part of her household not only as a minor but also for substantial portions of his adulthood, including serving as the male head-of-household after she was widowed. When Charley’s siblings John, Emma, and Belle grew up and moved out in the mid-1890s to establish their own households nearby in Green County with their spouses and in the course of time began filling those homes with offspring, Charley continued to be a fixture of his original home. (There are signs he may have lodged elsewhere on occasion, but never longterm until he was in his mid-thirties.) He took care of the family farm, freeing up his father to concentrate on “town” occupations such as insurance agent and justice of the peace. Charley also had land of his own, “bought” from his Martin grandparents in late 1896, when he was twenty-four years old. (The purchase price was $150 total. While this was no token amount -- it was the equivalent of three to four months’ wages to someone with a good-paying job such as a manager of a retail business -- the acreage was surely worth far more.)

One of the ways Charley earned the money to purchase his land came by means of the “Warner Brothers” threshing rig. While it was no doubt his father who supplied the funds to acquire the equipment, it was Charley and his brother John who operated it. Naturally it served to harvest the Warners’ own crops, but limiting its use to just the family would have been a waste of resources. Their beauty was a 16-horsepower Advance engine rig, a state-of-the-art steam-powered machine that few farmers in the area would have been able to afford for their exclusive use. The brothers hired themselves and the rig out all across the nearby parts of Green County, WI and Stephenson County, IL. The rig was acquired in approximately 1892, when Charley was twenty. Newspaper items confirm it was still in use in 1905, steam power still having the advantage over internal combustion engines. (Steam-powered items were in such common use in the 1890s and early 1900s that one of the large buildings along the railroad tracks in Martintown was used primarily as a coal shed.) By 1905, John Martin Warner was a general store proprietor in Martintown and probably put in few if any shifts operating the rig. By that time, it was younger brother Cullen Warner, born in 1882, who filled out the Warner Brothers team with Charley. The rig was extremely well known to locals, even those who had no crops to harvest, because the double whistle could be heard for miles around.

Charley was a capable and hard worker. He was a person manifestly dedicated to and appreciative of family bonds. That, along with the social status of his clan in the Martintown area, made him a prime prospect to become a husband. While another man might have remained unmarried from lack of choice, Charley clearly was not a “loser” and must have attracted the attention of any number of women. Yet a bachelor he remained. This choice prompts the modern-day observer to wonder if he might have been homosexual. This is a question that will probably never be possible to answer. Charley himself might well not have been able to answer that question even in his own mind. Due to his upbringing, he is unlikely to have ever acknowledged the orientation even if it were an intrinsic part of his being. As far as is possible to know, while he was said to be bashful toward women, he liked them just fine, and in his elderly years had a hands-holding, make-the-relatives-wonder relationship with a lifelong spinster, Bessie Fetzer.

The “Warner Brothers” threshing rig at work in about the year 1900. Charley might be in this picture, but if so, he is not identified. On the far left is his brother Cullen. His father John Warner is near Cullen, leaning against the tractor.

As the 19th Century was wearing to a close, big changes loomed for the extended Warner clan. John Warner had long been a broker of custom hardwood lumber. His salesmanship was no doubt a prime reason his brother-in-law Cullen Penny Brown had lured him down to Howell County, MO in the mid-1880s. During the 1890s, John maintained a lumber business partnership with Dayton D. Tyler. While Dayton served as the hands-on sawyer, John dealt with the paperwork and customer relations. (Tyler’s sawmill was located on his land about a mile north of Martintown. The parcel had been owned in pioneer days by John Saucerman, and it stood next to Saucerman Cemetery, where one day Charley Warner himself would be laid to rest.) The firm was called Tyler & Warner. Charley no doubt assisted in this business when needed. Another lumber operation that appreciated John’s sales acumen was the Meyer Brothers outfit in Scioto Mills, Stephenson County, IL, ten miles to the southeast of Martintown. Just when and how John became connected there is not yet clear, but probably the initial relationship was concurrent with the existence of Tyler & Warner, as the Meyer Brothers mill was large enough and equipped well enough to handle custom-wood production runs beyond the ability of Dayton Tyler to deal with. In turn, Meyers Brothers would have been looking for someone to expand the sales reach of their business from the late 1880s onward, because in approximately 1887 a rail line reached Scioto Mills. Once the depot was built, suddenly it was practical to ship lumber to far more distant customers, and business boomed. John Warner apparently became a prime asset to assist with the upswing.

The opportunity represented by Scioto Mills became so attractive that John convinced Nellie that they should leave their farm. In the second half of the year 1900, they moved to a large house in Scioto Mills. (Whether they had the house built or moved into an existing structure is unknown.) The youngest three sons of the family -- Cullen, Bert, and Walter Warner -- were still minors and so naturally they came along. Charley chose to move as well. (The house is shown at right. This photo is believed to have been taken during the family’s tenure.)

For Charley, the move was a watershed moment. Scioto Mills would figure into his life not only for the next six to ten years, but be the place to which he returned in old age. It was a place where he made lifelong friends. Among those friends were members of the Fetzer family, most particularly Bessie Fetzer, who was nearing twenty years old at the time the Warners moved. Scioto Mills was also the venue where Charley settled into his own as a sawyer and businessman. He and his father founded the firm Warner & Son, suppliers of custom lumber.

Back in Martintown, John Martin Warner took over the old home and used it for his growing family. About the same time as his parents departed Martintown, young John became the proprietor of one of the village’s two general stores. Here, too, Charley was part of the picture. Charley often dropped by Martintown to see his brother or his sisters or say hello to old friends. When John was unable to tend to the store for any reason -- a family vacation, a business trip, etc. -- it was often Charley who filled in as shopkeeper. Apparently this experience gave Charley the itch to make his own mark in this field of endeavor. In January, 1905, Charley opened his own general store in Waddams Grove, about six miles southwest of Martintown. He moved to that community, perhaps into living quarters in the second floor of the store itself.

How long the Waddams Grove venture lasted is murky, but it does not seem to have endured more than a year. Receipts survive showing Charley was still acquiring items for his pharmaceutical inventory in the late spring of 1905, but mentions of him in the “Martintown news” column of the Freeport, IL Journal Standard in the summer of that year describe him as a resident of Scioto Mills. While it is vaguely possible he kept his store after mid-1905 by commuting from Scioto Mills each workday, chances are he had reversed course and come back to focus his energies on Warner & Son. Given the clan’s adept understanding of investments and business opportunities, it is unwarranted to assume Charley’s business failed. He may well have had an offer from a buyer and decided it made sense to sell at that particular time. Likewise, he may have been lured back by an offer from his father, who seemed ready to welcome him back with a higher degree of ownership than he had previously enjoyed.

Shown here is “downtown” Scioto Mills. This image dates from the middle of the 20th Century, long after the John & Nellie Warner household lived there, but even at that time the community resembled its older incarnation so much that when Bert Warner saw a print of this photograph in the 1970s, when he was in his nineties, he was certain the boy standing by the railroad tracks was his brother Charley, and wrote a note on the back saying as much. The boy is in fact Donald Bennett, not born until Bert was already getting long in the tooth. Nor could the boy have been Charley Warner in any case. The depot so clearly portrayed in this view was not even built until Charley was in his mid-teens. Note the huge building in the center background. That was the old mill, the landmark of the community, long unused by the time the photo was taken. (Note the delapidated condition of the roof of the attached shed, which housed the steam generator used for power after the mill pond was drained.) The old mill was replaced by the newer, smaller mill on the left, which looks good here because it was being used as The Blue Room, a tavern well known by local folk. John Henke was the proprietor. Charley would have known Scioto Mills in just this way when he was an old man. The locale did not stay like this for long after his death, though. The old mill was torn down in 1970 and The Blue Room, which became a residence after John Henke’s death, was found to be just about falling apart when a couple of Charley’s grand nieces paid a visit to the site in 2010.

Charley’s return may also have had something to do with his brother Cullen’s situation. By mid-1905, Cullen’s wife Minnie Brecklin Warner was fighting a losing battle with a case of tuberculosis. As of this were not a bad enough cirumstance on its own, Cullen and Minnie had a one-year-old daughter, Selma, whose welfare was at stake. Cullen and Minnie according were not trying to maintain their own home, but shared the Scioto Mills home of the greater family. Charley’s capable presence on the scene surely must helped the family cope with the ordeal.

Minnie continued to decline and passed away at the beginning of 1906. In the immediate wake of that sorrowful event, it became apparent Cullen had developed tuberculosis as well. His doctor pointed out that removing him to an arid, hot climate might buy him extra time -- perhaps years extra. John and Nellie Warner were quick to respond on behalf of their ill son. Several of Nellie’s Frame cousins had settled in the San Joaquin Valley. Will Frame, Jake Frame, and the offspring of her late cousin Elias Frame were all able to report that California was a good place to live, a land of opportunities -- and the air was dry. So John and Nellie decided to move there with Cullen and little Selma. Youngest sons Bert and Walter were to come as well. Bert was sent on ahead in early December with a whole rail car stuffed with family possessions, including the buggy and team of horses, heading for the depot at Fowler, Fresno County, CA, a few miles from the farm of Will Frame. Bert was accompanied by his first cousin Fay Horatio Martin, who had lost his own father to TB in April of that year. Walter quickly married his sweetheart Margaret Jane Bell 12 December 1906 in Freeport. Three days later, the main group of family members (John, Nellie, Cullen, Selma, Walter, and Margaret) departed. All of those who were part of this late-1906 exodus would reside in California for the rest of their lives, except Fay Martin, who stayed Out West only a few weeks.

Early in 1907, John and Nellie bought a large piece of land east of the towns of Fresno and Clovis at the edge of the foothills, near the small trading post of Academy. It was near a seasonal stream called Fancher Creek, and in later years the property was referred to in memory among the family variously as “the ranch at Academy” or “the Fancher Creek place.” However, while it was a part of the family’s day-to-day existence it also bore the more affectionate name of Spring Brook Ranch. A large house was built. This was where Cullen stayed, kept company full-time by Bert. John and Nellie and Selma were often on site as well, but on a more limited basis. It made sense for Selma to be kept somewhat isolated from her father so as to lessen the risk of her catching TB, and John would not have been happy unless he was in an environment where he could ply his trade as a merchant. So John and Nellie obtained a house in the town of Sanger, ten miles south of Academy. Walter and Margaret dwelled in a shack at Spring Brook Ranch until they obtained a place of their own.

Charley was not part of the 1906 exodus. Instead, he lingered in Scioto Mills -- the only family member to do so. How long this solo interval lasted is not entirely clear because even though he treated Scioto Mills as his official base for several years, he spent huge chunks of time in California during that same period. A pair of Journal Standard articles provide the timing of a trip in 1907, indicating Charley left Scioto Mills in mid-July with a train car of family goods, and then returned in mid-November in order to sell Warner-family assets. So even in calendar year 1907, he was only in Illinois at most a total of eight months. He made more long visits to California in 1908 and 1909. By the time of the 1909 visit, his sister Belle and brother-in-law Alie Spece and their two girls had joined the other Warners in Fresno County (at first, out of concern that Belle might be coming down with tuberculosis). While there in the spring of 1909, Charley helped his youngest brother Walter get situated on a farm in the southern part of the county. He was also on-hand to be part of the death vigil for Cullen Warner in late April. (Cullen passed away in a prolonged and heart-wrenching fashion on the first of May. Charley helped dig the grave.) The best guess of when Charley actually packed up himself and his worldly goods and gave up on Illinois for good was early 1910, meaning that he moved in tandem with his older brother John and family. By the time Charley went, his affection for Scioto Mills, and for Bessie Fetzer, had become fixed in his heart. This sentimental attachment would eventually lure him back, though it took three decades to do so.

As a bachelor, Charley was free to ponder what he would occupy himself with. He and his youngest brothers teamed up briefly to operate a produce stand in Fresno. He also helped out at Spring Brook Ranch, and when his father decided to sell the ranch, Charley helped his father operate a butchershop in Fresno -- a venture designed only to last a few months, just long enough to permit the family to sell the cattle they had raised in the foothills per pound at retail prices instead of turning over the whole herd to a slaughterhouse at a wholesale rate. Soon his father and his brother John teamed up to open Warner & Warner, a feed grain warehouse and hardware store in Sanger. Alie Spece opened a feed lot next door. Charley does not appear to have been co-owner of either business, but was nevertheless a key figure in terms of the day-to-day operation of both. This is a way of saying his residence became Sanger, probably in the form of moving in with his parents and his niece Selma.

Through the early 1910s, Charley was needed at the warehouse because his brother John was often absent tending to his dying wife, Anna, and then coping with being a single father after Anna passed away from her case of tuberculosis. In 1913, the business was given over to Alie Spece and Bert Warner to manage. Charley was then able to concentrate upon his own pursuit, and he chose to be a farmer. A 1912 postcard survives on which he wrote approvingly of the inexpensive cost of obtaining a twenty-acre parcel of farmland in the county. He wrote this as encouragement for his sister Emma and her husband Fred Hastings to join the rest of the kinfolk in California, as Emma was the only one of John and Nellie’s offspring still left back in Green County. His overture eventually worked, though it was not until 1918 that Emma and Fred finally came. Meanwhile, Charley took his own advice and acquired some land.

He may have dwelled alone on his farm at first, but if so, his solitude ended upon the death of his father in early 1916. His mother and niece Selma moved in with him. Charley’s presence was a great comfort to Nellie in her widowhood. His emotional and father-figure support was even more important in the case of his niece as she proceeded through her teen years. As an adult looking back, Selma gave Charley full credit for helping raise her. Eventually she even named a son for him. This was a remarkable legacy for a man who had no biological progeny, especially one who lived in an era when men usually got little credit for nurturing children.

In 1919, Bert bought out Alie and took over full ownership of the grain warehouse, adding a gas station. Charley began working there again on a part-time basis as a clerk, selling hardware and hay and dealing with customers bringing in their automobiles for maintenance. (He may have pumped the occasional tank of gas, too.) He continued to farm, though. The extra income helped keep the household afloat. He did not have to worry about supporting Selma for long, though, because she married early and moved out. With her gone Charley was at liberty to entertain a change of circumstances. His brother John had started farming apples in Yucaipa, San Bernardino County, CA in the very early part of the 1920s, but gave up after two or three seasons. Along with his mother, Charley took over that operation, moving down to the southlands even as John came back to Fresno County.

Charley’s timing was unfortunate. A quarantine against hoof-and-mouth disease in 1924 interfered with his ability to ship his crop to the usual markets. He persevered for most of the decade, but by 1929 he decided he had given the Yucaipa land his best shot. He returned and picked up where he had left off as a Sanger-area farmer. His decision may have been influenced by Nellie, who was turning eighty and could no longer be left at home alone all day while he was out in the fields. In fact, she does not appear to have settled in again at Charley’s house, but stayed with Belle and Alie on their farm, where she died in early 1930.

Through the 1930s Charley was a familiar visitor at the homes of his Fresno County (and Santa Cruz County) kinfolk, but he was at a point where he could just pick up and move if he wanted to. This was a temptation he was unable to resist, though he held off doing so until the late 1930s. It wasn’t in his nature to live out of reach of family, though, so when he did move, he went to a place where he would be able to see at least one familiar face. His brother John had been based in Grants Pass, OR for quite some time by then. Charley bought a home five miles to the east in the rural fringe of the small community of Rogue River, Jackson County, OR. Since he had ample skills with lumber, he became a carpenter.

Southwest Oregon was a nice place to live, as Charley undoubtedly already knew from visiting Selma and her husband Bill Mead when they had lived just north of Grants Pass from the early 1920s to the early 1930s. While there he was able to renew his connection to his big brother and get to know his new sister-in-law Ellen, whom John had married after moving to the state. But the arrangement did not have a lasting appeal. In the early 1940s, Charley decided to go home. As in, the region he had sprung from.

Coming back to Illinois had a great deal of appeal, and there is every sign Charley felt he had made the right decision. He had been gone for thirty years, but he still had ties. Principal among them was his sister Emma. Although Fred and Emma had moved to California in 1918, they had gone back to Green County in 1929 when the man who had bought their farm stopped being able to make the mortgage payments. For the remaining twenty-plus years of his life, Charley would be a familiar presence at Emma’s home. He often would stay overnight inasmuch as he did not have his own vehicle. Given his highly sociable nature, he also paid regular visits to such relatives as his cousin Lena Brown Hastings in Martintown, his niece Leah Schumacher in rural Green County, or his other niece Dorothy Yost a few miles farther north in Monroe, seat of Green County. He was of course a regular at major family gatherings, weddings, and so forth, including the 1954 celebration commmorating the 75th-anniversary of the founding of the Martintown Community Church, which Charley had seen built by his grandfather when he was seven years old, and may even have helped construct to the limited degree a boy of his age could provide assistance.

Charley may have had more than one home after returning to Illinois. A granddaughter of Emma recalls Charley being based in the woods near Savanna, Carroll County, IL, about thirty miles southwest of Martintown. If so, he was there for a limited time. Multiple sources confirm he had a sawmill on Lily Creek Road just west of Freeport.

The sawmill was a one-man operation, though presumably Charley would have had help from time to time. He liked being his own boss, and liked being back at a trade he had known in his younger days, which was creation of custom-cut hardwood lumber. And he liked being out in the open air -- the sawmill was set up right in the woods, not inside a shed. He kept up this activity until he was in his eighties. The photograph above right shows him at work. The sawmill was located quite near where he stayed as a lodger with his old friend Bessie Fetzer. A daughter of George Fetzer and Adeline Doll, Bessie had been born 15 September 1881 at Scioto Mills. She had never married. When Charley returned to Illinois, Bessie had long been maintaining a home in Red Oak, a tiny community near Scioto Mills, with her bachelor younger brother Roy Fetzer. The pair welcomed Charley as a housemate. Over the 1940s and 1950s, it was Bessie, or sometimes Bessie and Roy together, who brought Charley up to Winslow, Martintown, and Monroe for his visits. The relatives took to gossiping about Bessie being Charley’s girlfriend. As far as anyone can truly tell, their relationship remained platonic. However, they got along very well and spent a great deal of time together, and if any woman could be referred to as having been the wife of Charles Elias Warner, it would have to be Bessie Fetzer. (Bessie is the figure on the left, sharing a picnic lunch during a visit Charley’s sisters Emma and Belle made to see him in the mid-1950s. You can also see Bessie in the sawmill photo if you look right over Charley’s shoulder. Her face and hat are visible. Like many women who came of age at the turn of the century, Bessie never lost her habit of wearing hats.)

Charley ceased working in approximately 1956, finally unable to handle such rigorous tasks as cutting and stacking lumber. He could still handle travel, though, and took Bessie along on a trip to California in the autumn of 1957. He was back in California just a few months later in January of 1958 to head to Oregon with siblings Emma, Bert, and Belle to attend the funeral of John Martin Warner in Grants Pass. Charley paid for the funeral home expenses, Bert for the burial plot.

The final decline began with hospitalization in Freeport 23 July 1958. Charley made it through the crisis, which prompted his siblings Bert and Belle to come all the way back to Illinois to visit him. While there, they and Emma found a rest home for him, because it appeared he needed regular nursing care for the rest of his life. Upon discharge from the Freeport hospital 5 August 1958, he was admitted to a facility in Warren, Jo Daviess County, IL. He improved enough, though, that he was able to move back in with Bessie, spending no more than a fraction of a month in Warren. It was a temporary reprieve. In August, 1959, he was admitted to the Ortiz Nursing Home in Lena, Stephenson County, IL, where he resided until he passed away 1 April 1961. (Bessie Fetzer would become an Ortiz Nursing Home resident a few years later, remaining there until just before her death at a Freeport hospital in September, 1966.) Charley was buried in Saucerman Cemetery (also known as Old Cadiz Cemetery) in Green County, WI. His grave lies next to his sister Emma, who survived him by a year.

To go back to Charley’s mother’s page, click here. To go back to his father’s page, click here. To return to the Martin/Strader Family main page, click here. To return to the Warner/Alexander Family main page, click here.