Charles A. Spring

Charles A. Spring (July 25, 1800 – January 17, 1892) was an American merchant and religious leader. He had a profound impact on Presbyterianism in the Northwest Territory, helping to establish at least six churches in Iowa and Illinois, and acted as a delegate in the General Assembly of 1861, which voted on the Gardiner Spring Resolutions and thus gave the assent of the Presbyterian Church to Abraham Lincoln's moves to keep the Union together.

Charles A. Spring was the second youngest of the children of the Rev. Samuel Spring, Sr., the Revolutionary War chaplain of Benedict Arnold's army. Born in the Manse of the Congregationalist Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts on July 25, 1800, he was a descendant of Rev. Solomon Stoddard, a brother of Rev. Gardiner Spring, and a relative of Rev. Jonathan Edwards and Vice-President Aaron Burr.

After his father's death in 1819, Charles moved south to Boston, and went to work as a merchant, dealing in silk goods and textiles. In 1823, he married Dorothy B. Norton of Maine. Three of their children were born in Boston: Frances Eliza, Charles A. Spring, Jr., and Winthrop Norton. Sometime before 1830, the family moved to Brooklyn, where daughters Edwina and Gertrude, as well as son George Hopkins, were born.

In 1837, the Springs went west as part of the Great Migration, and settled first at Rock Island, Illinois on the Mississippi River. At the time, the journey from New York to Illinois took one month, and was made by the way of the Erie Canal and then the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

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