Montrose County CO Archives Biographies.....Baker, Charles T. 1848 - ?
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Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net November 7, 2005, 4:16 pm

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

Charles T. Baker 

	The religious fervor, the stern self-reliance and the determined persistency

that colonized New England, have left their mark ineradicably on all phases of

American history.  Wherever the voice of duty has led the spirit of New England

has responded, and its work is glorious in all places and all lines of life. 

Scarcely had it established a foothold on the rocky coast of the Atlantic when

it began to go forth into the farther wilderness for new conquest and the spread

of its beneficent activity.  From it came the ancestry of Charles T. Baker,

county assessor of Montrose county, whose forefathers in the paternal line were

among the early settlers of western New York, locating near what is now the city

of Buffalo, where he was born in 1848.  His father, Thomas Y. Baker, was a

native of that state, and spent his early life in New York city, serving when a

young man as amanuensis to Horace Greeley.  He afterward engaged in the

newspaper business in connection with a publication famous later as the New York

Ledger, in which he was associated with the well known “blood and thunder”

writer, Ned Buntline.  When he sold his interest in this venture he went into

the book publishing business on Fulton street in Brooklyn, which he continued

until the opening of the Civil war.  Then being treasurer and lieutenant of the

Thirteenth Regiment, New York State Guard, a military organization still in

existence, he entered the Union army with his command and served three months. 

At the end of that time he returned home and raised a company in the

Eighty-seventh New York Infantry, and as its lieutenant returned to the army and

was assigned to active service, which he conducted in a manner so satisfactory

that at the battle of Fair Oaks he was made captain.  Being taken prisoner soon

after this, he was confined in Libby prison and later at Salisbury, Missouri. 

After his exchange he went back to his New York home and from there came west to

Wisconsin, and locating at Madison, engaged in the livery business until 1868,

when he was burned out, after which he opened a hotel at St. Peters, Wisconsin,

which he conducted for two years.  Then buying out a large boarding house in

Milwaukee, he was in charge of that during the next two years, disposing of it

to take a position at Omaha, Nebraska, as superintendent of the lumber

department of the Union Pacific Railroad at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars

a year.  A few years later he returned to New York city and died there in 1876,

at the age of fifty-two.  He was a Democrat in politics and a prominent Mason in

fraternal relations.  He was the son of John and Phoebe (Wood) Baker, the former

a native of Pennsylvania who passed the most of his life on Long Island engaged

in shoemaking, and dying in Westchester county, New York.  Charles T. Baker’s

mother, Sarah S. (Worden) Baker, was born at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1826 and

married to Mr. Baker in 1847.  She was the daughter of Philander and Isabella

(Carter) Worden, her father a native of New York and her mother of New

Hampshire.  The mother was a descendant of John Worden, who came to America on

the “Mayflower” in the early history of Massachusetts.  She died in 1854, aged

sixty, in New York city, where her husband also died, his end coming in 1858, at

the age of sixty.  He was a Democrat in politics and a son of James Worden a

prosperous New York farmer.  Charles T. Baker passed his boyhood in New York and

Brooklyn, and his youth in Madison, Wisconsin.  In the latter state he completed

his education at the State University, and after leaving school, in company with

another young man, purchased six bicycles and went through portions of Wisconsin

and Iowa teaching young men to ride them, hiring halls in various places for the

purpose.  Returning to Milwaukee, he was employed in the office of the Young

Men’s Christian Association in the clerical department for a year, then moved to

Kansas and for seven years was engaged in farming near Independence.  From there

he migrated to Joplin, Missouri, and followed teaming and hauling ore for G.B.

Carson until 1877.  Late in the spring of that year he came to Colorado and

settled at Crested Butte, arriving there on July 3d, having been forty-five days

on the journey with a team and covered wagon.  In the fall he changed his

residence to Rosita, where he bought a small ranch on which he lived three

years, then sold out and moved to California.  He remained in that state eight

months, visiting various sections of it, and at the end of that period returned

to Colorado and took up a ranch of one hundred and sixty acres on North Mesa

river on a pre-emption claim.  He was occupied in farming this until 1889, when

he was elected county assessor, an office he is still filling, and whose duties

he is performing in a very creditable and satisfactory manner.  He still owns

his place, but since assuming his office has had it in charge of an agent or

tenant.  His principal crops are grain and hay, and as he owns water rights

sufficient to provide proper irrigation, he can make his operations more

profitable than many others.  He is, however, interested in the full and

adequate development of his section, and serves as secretary of the Loutsensezer

Ditch Company of North Mesa.  He is also prominent and active in road

improvement and school work, and gives due attention to every line of useful

activity in the general service of the community.  He was married in 1876 at

Neodesha, Kansas, to Miss Selina Gartin, a native of Missouri, who died in 1895,

at the age of forty-two, leaving two children, Theodosia and Minnie.  In the

winter of 1902-3 he married a second wife, Miss Laura Ludwig, a native of

Minnesota and daughter of Frederick and Wilhelmina (Reko) Ludwig, natives of

Germany but long resident in the United States.  The father was a machinist by

trade who came from his native land to Minnesota, and after a residence of some

years in that state moved to Colorado.  His parents, Charles and Anna Ludwig,

also came from Germany to Minnesota.  Charles was an engineer, but passed the

last twenty years of his life farming.  Wilhelmina (Reko) Ludwig was a daughter

of Christopher Reko, who, on his arrival in the United States from Germany,

settled in Renville county, Minnesota, and died soon afterward.  Mr. Baker has

been long and favorably known throughout the county, and has enjoyed in a marked

degree the confidence and esteem of the people.  His public services have been

valuable and appreciated and his private life has been one of industry and

uprightness.  

Additional Comments:
From Progressive Men of Western Colorado.  Chicago:  A.W. Bowen & Co., 1905

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