Charlemagne Tower

Charlemagne Tower, (April 18, 1809 – July 25, 1889) was an American lawyer and businessman active in acquiring land in the Schuylkill Valley in Pennsylvania and serving as an officer for coal and railroad companies. He organized and led a company of Union soldiers from Pottsville in a 3-month enlistment during the American Civil War, when he was commissioned as captain.

After the war, with sell-off of lands by the Northern Pacific Railroad, he acquired large tracts in the upper Midwest and Northwest.

Charlemagne Tower was born on April 18, 1809 in Paris, Oneida County, New York, the eldest of the eight children of Reuben Tower, a New York State Legislator, and Deborah Taylor Pierce. Tower took his early schooling at the Oxford Academy, and then at the Clinton and Utica Academies. In 1824, at the age of 14, Tower taught school in Oneida County. The next year, he was made an assistant teacher at the Utica Academy. Tower entered Harvard in 1827, and graduated in 1830.

In the interim, Reuben Tower relocated his family to Waterville, NY, purchasing a property that still stands at the intersection of West Main St (Rt 12) and Tower St. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 as the Tower Homestead and Masonic Temple.

Upon graduation, Tower became a legal apprentice of Harmanus Bleecker of Albany. He returned to Waterville in 1832 upon the death of his father, who had moved to St. Augustine, Florida for health reasons. After settling his father's estate, Tower started working with the Graham Law Office of New York City. After being admitted to the bar in 1836, he returned to Waterville and started his own practice in a former small schoolhouse that is part of the Tower homestead.

In 1846, Tower relocated to Orwigsburg, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, in order to work with the legal issues regarding land claims to large coal and mineral deposits in that area. While there, he married Amelia Malvina Bartle on June 14, 1847. They had seven children: Charlemagne Jr. (Born April 17, 1848 in Philadelphia), Sara Louisa (Born August 6, 1849 in Orwigsburg), Deborah Taylor (Born February 4, 1851 in Orwigsburg), Emma (Born June 15, 1852 in Pottsville), Elizabeth (Born March 2, 1854 in Pottsville, and died a year and a half later), Henrietta (Born October 26, 1856 in Pottsville), and Grace Williams (Born May 15, 1859 in Pottsville).

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