San Francisco County
Biographies
CHARLES
EDWIN WHITE
CHARLES EDWIN WHITE, real-estate agent of Golden Gate,
Oakland, was born in Piscataquis county, Maine, April
9, 1845, the son of Charles and Anna S. (Knight) White. His father was born in Peacham, Vermont, and was mostly a farmer during his life.
Coming to California in 1855, he followed mining three years, and returning East he afterward moved to Alexander, Douglas county,
Minnesota, in 1883, and died there July 11, 1889, at the age of seventy-eight
years. Mr. White’s mother was a native of Sebec,
Piscataquis county, Maine, and is still living, aged
seventy-eight, with the subject of this sketch. The grandfather, George Knight,
a farmer in Maine, died there, aged eighty-two years; and his wife, whose name
before marriage was Catharine Sands, was of a long-lived family, but died in
middle life. Hugh Sands, her grandfather, was banished from England for
political reasons, and his coat-of-arms was preserved in the family for a long
time. David, his son, the father of Catharine Sands, was at one time in England
to recover the Sands estate, but failed. Later it has been understood that the
American branch of the family was entitled to it, but the necessary papers have
since been lost. This David Sands was born on Long Island, New York, October 4,
1845, and died in Cornwall, Orange county, New York,
in June, 18–. He became a merchant, but entered the Society of Friends,
marrying a member of that denomination, and began to preach in 1872, and
continued thus to labor in this country and in Canada until 1874, and then in
Europe until he was sixty years of age. A book was published at New York in
1848, entitled, "David Sands: A Journal of His Life and Gospel
Labors."
B. F. Sands was born in Baltimore, February 11, 1811,
became an Admiral in the United States navy, and died in Washington, District
of Columbia, June 30, 1883. Henry Berton Sands, born
in New York city, September 27, 1830, graduated in
1854, and is a prominent surgeon of that city. Joshua Ratoon
Sands, born in Brooklyn, New York, May 13, 1795, died in Baltimore, October 2,
1883; he also became a naval officer. His father Joshua Sands,
was Collector of the port of New York and a Representative to Congress in
1803-5 and in 1825-7. The son, Joshua Ratoon Sands,
was made Rear Admiral July 25, 1866. Robert Charles Sands, author, was born in
Flatbush, Long Island, May 11, 1799, and died in Hoboken, New Jersey, December
17, 1832. His father, Comfort Sands, living from 1748 to 1834, was a New York
merchant, an active Revolutionary patriot, a delegate to the State
Constitutional Convention of 1777 and for many years a member of the
Legislature.
Mrs. Hannah
S. White has three sons living, namely: Henry Kirk, born in Sebec,
Maine, moved to Minnesota about 1873, and is now Clerk of the Douglas County
Court; he married Miss Electa Moulton, and has one
son and one daughter,–Carl Moulton and Nina O.; Charles E. the subject of this
sketch, is the next in order of birth; James Elliott, whose sketch is given
elsewhere in this work. Mrs. While also has two daughters,–one dying in infancy
and the other during girlhood.
Mr. Charles E. White was brought up in his
native county to the age of sixteen and a half years, at school and on the
farm. In the fall of 1861 he enlisted in the Twentieth Maine Volunteer
Infantry, was wounded in the battle of Fredericksburg December 14, 1861, in the
shoulder, and was discharged from the hospital in 1863. His brother, Henry K.,
enlisted in the Sixth Maine Volunteer Infantry, and lost his left arm in the
battle of Cold Harbor. Both the brothers now draw a pension. After his
discharge from the army service he served as wagonmaster
on the plains to Salt Lake, for a Government train, two years. About the close
of the war he returned home and served as clerk for a hat house in Boston a
year and a half. Then he went to Minnesota and took up 160 acres of land in Osakes township, Douglas township,
and remained there about eight years. About 1882 he sold out his farm and was
traveling salesman for a nursery house in Minneapolis until 1886, and then for
a furniture factory of Sauk Center, Minnesota, about a year and a half. While
in Minnesota he spent a year and a half at the State University there, at the
age of thirty years. He came to the coast in 1887, in the employ of the Sauk
Center furniture manufactury. A little more than a
year afterward, in March, 1890, he entered the real estate business as manager
for Jeffress & White (his brother), at the Golden
Gate office. Also for a year he has operated here as a builder and contractor,
having learned the trade of carpenter in his youth. In October, 1890, he bought
the business of the Golden Gate office. In his fraternal relations he is a
member of the Masonic order, of the I. O. O. F. and of the G. A. R.
He was married in Sauk Center, Minnesota,
in 1880, to Mary Hubbard, a native of Maine, taken in childhood to Minnesota.
Her father, Captain Andrew Hubbard, had command of a Minnesota regiment in the
last war and lost his life in the service. Her mother, before marriage Olive Soule, is still living. The Soules
and the Hubbards are of New England descent for
several generations. Mr. And Mrs. White’s children are: Olive, born in 1883; Emelia, in 1886; and Herold
Hubbard, in 1888.
Transcribed
by Elaine Sturdevant.
Source: "The
© 2006 Elaine Sturdevant.