Charles Gerrish

HARLES GERRISH, a retired farmer of Vw St. Charles, is numbered among the honored pioneers of Winona County, having here made his home since 1855. He has witnessed the entire growth and development of this region, and has ever borne his part in the work of progress and development, so that his name is inseparably connected with the history of this section. A native of New Hampshire, Mr. Gerrish was born in Canterbury, Merrimac County, on the Ist of March, 1822. His father, Joseph Gerrish, was also born in that locality, and was the sixth in direct descent from Capt William Gerrish, founder of the family in America. The Captain was born in Bristol, England, in 1617, braved the dangers of an ocean voyage in 1639, became a resident of Newbury, Mass., and died in 1687. His son. Col. Moses Gerrish, was the father of Col. Joseph Gerrish, and the grandfather of Capt. Stephen Gerrish, who was the great-grandfather of the gentleman whose name heads this record. The grandfather bore the name of Samuel Gerrish.

Charles Gerrish has in his possession many interesting heirlooms, including a worsted comb. This was borrowed from his mother sixty years ago by a lady whose son returned it to Charles Gerrish only three years since. He also has two old silhouettes, the common style of picture at that day, one of his mother at twenty years of age, and the other of Ezekiel Webster, brother of Daniel Webster. He has a block of wood cut from a tree famous in history, the one on which Daniel Webster hung his scythe when, after complaining to his father of the way it hung, he was told to hang it to suit himself. An old peter plate in his home belonged to his grandmother's mother, and is about two hundred years old. He also has a peter teapot given to his grandmother, Mrs. Samuel Gerrish.

Joseph Gerrish only lived eight miles from the home of Daniel Webster. He married Sarah Chandler, and after the death of his first wife wedded Sarah Church, daughter of John Church. Her father was a native of Ireland, and a son of Colonel Church, of the English army. When a child of seven years, he came to the United States with a friend. Both the Gerrish and Church families have had many representatives in military life.

Charles Gerrish was reared on a farm in New Hampshire, on the Merrimac River, in the old neighborhood where many representatives of the family resided. At a Gerrish meeting held in 1841 at his home, there were one hundred and seventy-five near relatives present, and with one

Google exception all of these were Whigs. These family meetings were a feature in New England society for over half a century. Charles remained on the old homestead and operated the farm until 1853. The following year he came West and took up his residence in New Buffalo, Mich. The following spring he came to Minnesota, reaching Saratoga on the 19th of June, 1855. A few weeks previous he had secured a claim on sections 3, 4, 9 and 10, Saratoga Township, and at once began to improve that farm, which he made his home for twenty years. It comprised four hundred acres of rich land, and was a valuable property. His first home was a log cabin, 16x22 feet, with a '4ean-to," and in that house the first school in Saratoga Township was taught by Miss Helen Hewitt, daughter of Jason Hewitt. She had about twenty-six pupils. She was afterward married, and her husband was killed in the Quantrell raid at Lawrence, Kan., where she now lives. Her father still resides in Saratoga Township. The first election in that township was held m the Gerrish home, and out of the thirty-two votes cast thirty were for Republican candidates.

Mr. Gerrish was married on the 18th of March, 1845, in West Hartford, Vt., to Miss Olive W. Dimick, a native of the Green Mountain State. To them have been born three children: Allen, of St. Charles, a market gardener and breeder of Duroc Jersey red hogs; Adah, wife of A. B. Dyar, of Saratoga; and Etta Veva. wife of Louis H. Dyer, of Quincy Township, Olmsted County.

The parents aided in the organization of the Congregational Church in Saratoga, about 1856, and are now connected with the church in St Charles. Mr. Gerrish, who has always been a stanch Republican in politics, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1857. After selling his first farm, he bought and sold several other tracts of land, and now owns considerable farm property. On coming here in 1855, he had a capital stock of about $2,000, but he has made the most of his opportunities, and is now numbered among the substantial citizens of the community, a position to which he is justly entitled. He is a large man, of fine physique, with a long gi*ay beard and kindly gray eye, the latter being an index of his character.

Otis Abell.

As printed in Portrait and biographical record of Winona County, Minnesota: containing ... (1895). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.