Charles
Sverre FISCHER was born March 15, 1874 in Toms River, New Jersey to Susan McCullough
ADAMS and John Fischer. He was the youngest
of their children to live to adulthood. And perhaps he was spoiled because
there was a seven year gap between him and his next oldest sibling. All the
other younger siblings died in early childhhod.His mother Susan’s family, the ROCKHILLs, were all in the shipping industry. Charles had an unusual walk because he learned to walk as a toddler aboard a sailing ship. He spent his childhood in New Jersey.
He said he got an allowance of five dollars a week. That was a man’s wages in those days. So they were obviously well-to-do. His mother came from the most prominent family in the area. One thing he mentioned kind of in passing, was a family house that had large openings on either side of the fire place to the outside that you could pull a chain through, fasten it to a log, and hitch the other end to a horse and haul it into the fire place. (This matches the discription of his grandpa Mathis’ mansion in Burlington).
When he was ten years old his mother died. Not much else is known about his childhood. Charles left home before 1890 He never spoke of, or contacted his family again. When his father died in 1909 the family only knew Charles was “out west”. He was not included in his father’ will. Supposedly the the thing that caused him to leave home was a fight with his father about a girl he took out. She was a common person, maybe a waitress. His father told him if she came into the house she would have to come in through the servants entrance.
Charles told snippets of stories about his adventures after he left home. He tried various ways to support himself. He tried to start a newspaper with a partner. As he described it, He started with the money and his partner had the experience. When it ended he had the experience and his partner took off with all the money. For a while he was an assistant to a blind piano player and traveled the circuit with him. Sometime at a carnival he agreed to be tattooed to get a meal. The tattoo artist arranged with him to pretend to be a customer to get business rolling.
Later he ended up down in the South. He told of a time he and a local man were being shot at. He asked the local “Why don’t you settle your arguments with fists like we do in the North?” The local man replied, “In the North you fight to see who is the better man. Here in the South we fight to see who is going to live the longest!”
He hoped a freight train to Minnesota to join a volunteer regiment to fight the Spanish American War. He joined the regiment and then marched with them to St. Paul to the Fair Grounds where they put up camp. But there was an out break of typhoid. Many of the volunteers, including Charles, became dangerously ill and were hospitalized.
In 1900 Charles was 26. He was living in Royalton Village, Bellevue Township, Morrison Co. MN. Occupation Compositor”
He got a job at the newspaper in Brekenrige, as a reporter. On the 12th of September 1903 Charles was living in the city of Breckenridge, Wilkin County, Minnesota. There he met and married Alma Caroline Grimsrud a farm girl working as a waitress. She was from of Wahpeton, Richland County, North Dakota.
They left Minnesota and ended up in So. Bend WA where their daughter was born. From there they went to Centralia, Washington where their son was born.
Charles worked most of his married life as a linotype operator. His hobbies were reading and fishing. His indulgence was a new car. He needed the car to drive to the good fishing spots! He was a quiet man, never saying much. Charles died June 25, 1952 at the Lewis County Hopspital in Washington at the age of 78.