| Notes |
- Excerpts from "The History of West Virginia, Old and New," published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 643-644:
Born into a prominent family in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1816, Lathrop Russell Charter lived in Springfield until he was eighteen years of age, and then for one year was employed at Hartford, Connecticut. In the meantime his parents removed to Otsego County, New York, and when he rejoined his parents he engaged in teaching. He was liberally educated for his time and generation. He taught nine terms of school and in the meantime read medicine with Doctors Curtis and Johnson of Cooperstown, New York. One of his cherished memories of this period of his life was the friendship he formed with James Fenimore Cooper, the American novelist. In 1840-41 he attended medical lectures at Albany, New York, and then at Woodstock, Vermont, where he was graduated in 1841. One of the signers of his diploma from the College of Medicine at Woodstock was H. H. Childs, at that time president of the college and later a governor of Massachusetts. Dr. Charter subsequently took a medical course at Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
In the Fall of 1841 he began the practice of medicine at Guilford, New York, and two years later removed to Alleghany County of the same state. In the fall of 1845 he came to West Union, West Virginia, and a few months later went back to bring his family, making these three trips in a buggy. Through his liberal education and high attainment, soon after locating at West Union, he had all the work he could do as a physician and surgeon over a wide expanse of country around that town.
He performed his professional labors at a time when none of the modern facilities were available, such as good roads, the telephone, the corner drug store, but he was a very conscientious doctor and many a time when called out to attend the sick, drove miles over the hardest kind of roads and in inclement weather, never giving the matter of remuneration a thought. The manner in which he endured the hardships of his work and his true loyalty to all professional obligations indicated that he drew heavily from those inner resources of manhood that are the foundation of religion. He was one of the founders of the Methodist Episcopal Church at West Union and for many years was a generous supporter of the church and its program of activities. In politics he was a democrat.
Dr. Charter was the third superintendent of schools in Doddridge County. He also officiated as mayor of West Union, as magistrate, United States Commissioner and for fifteen years was United States Pension Examiner. He was eminently successful as a physician, and became a charter member of the West Virginia Medical Society and a member of the American Medical Association. At the time of his death, he was the oldest member of each of these bodies.
http://files.usgwarchives.net/wv/doddridge/bios/charter2.txt
There is evidence that at one point after settling in West Union, Dr. Charter may have considered re-locating to Kearney Junction in Buffalo County, Nebraska. In reference to doctors in the early years of the county, the Buffalo County Historical Society states: "Another doctor is known to have been present. Dr. Lathrop R. Charter from Doddridge County, West Virginia was witness to a land sale in mid-September, 1872 and later that month purchased four lots in the Perkins & Harford addition. His name does not appear in 1873, however." No further mention of Dr. Charter in Nebraska has been found. Just four years later, he built his permanent home in West Union.
http://www.oldcottonmill.com/buffalo-tales/BTales_198309.htm
Dr. Lathrop Charter's two-story T-shaped frame brick home in West Union, at 109 High Street near the court house, was built in 1877 in the Italianate style. Well known locally as the Charter House, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
http://www.wvculture.org/shpo/nr/pdf/doddridge/93000219.pdf
Charter's previous West Union home was destroyed by fire in 1858, as was most of the town. The fire actually originated in Dr. Charter's home, according to this account:
"On the night of March 27th, 1858, the fire fiend once more visited West Union, and this time laid the town in ashes. At the time many of the citizens were absent at Clarksburg, attending the United States court, then in session in that city. The fire originated in an upper room of the residence of L. R. Charter. A brisk gale was blowing and the flames spread rapidly to other buildings, the first being the large hotel and store room belonging to James A. Foley. Then followed the residence of Ethelbert Bond and the storehouse of Arthur Ingram. Many other buildings shared the same fate, and the next morning, what the evening before had been the town of West Union, was but a mass of smoldering ruins. But just at the time the Parkersburg and Grafton branch of the Baltimore & Ohio Railway was completed, and the town, phoenix-like, arose from its own ashes, and in a short time no traces of the holocaust remained behind."
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wvpioneers/doddridgecountyhistory.html
In addition to the children that he had by his two wives, Dr. Charter seems also to have fathered a daughter whose mother was a slave. Doddridge County birth records contain an entry for a female born alive in West Union in 1858. As with all other entries in the ledger-style birth record, only the child's first name is given, Julia. Exact date of birth is blank, but the sequence among other entries would indicate that it was late in the year. The child's race is given as C-S (corrected from W), presumably short for colored slave. Father's name: L. R. Charter. Father's occupation and residence: (blank). Mother's name: (blank). Informant and relationship to person born: L. R. Charter, Master. With the exception of the 1860 Slave Schedule, no further record has been found for this Julia Charter, assuming that she took that surname. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=2604473&Type=Birth
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1816 - 1909 (92 years)
[1, 2] 
