Biographical Sketch of Charles Brownwell Wilkinson, St. Joseph, 
Buchanan County, MO

>From "History of Buchanan County, Missouri, Published 1881, St. Joseph
Steam Printing Company, Printers, Binders, Etc., St. Joseph, Missouri.
**********************************************************************

Charles Brownwell Wilkinson, confessedly the ablest journalist ever
connected with the newspaper press of Upper Missouri, and a man with
scarcely a profession superior anywhere, was born in Waterville,
Oneida County, N.Y., October 15, 1827.  His ancestors were people of
gentle birth in England, and serveral of them served with distinc-
tion in the civil troubles in 1644.  In 1645, one of them came to
America, and settled in Rhode Island.  Another member of the family
came to America in the latter part of the seventeenth century and
settled in Maryland.  Many of the descendants of both branches of
this family subsequently served with distinction in important posi-
tions in the gift of the people.  The subject of this sketch was
educated at the Waterville Academy, New York, and at the age of
eighteen was prepared to enter the junior class of Hamilton College;
but his father decided to place him in a law office, and, in 1846,
he began his legal studies.  In 1849, he was admitted to Albany to
practice as an attorney and councelor.  In the same year he was 
initiated into Waterville Lodge, No. 240, I.O.O.F.  In 1850, he was
made a Master Mason by Sanger Lodge, No. 129, Waterville, in which
he afterwards held high official position, and which he represented
in the Grand Lodge of the state.  On September 10, 1851, he was
married to Miss Cornelia B. Hubbard, of Waterville, who died in St.
Joseph, Missouri, December 2, 1865.  In 1854, he began the publica-
tion of the Waterville Journal, a weekly newspaper, which he sold in 
1855, and removed to Toledo, Ohio.  Here he was President of the
Toledo Nursery Assoc. from June, 1855 to June, 1856.  In August, of
the same year, he went to Deansville, New York, where he erected a
large flouring mill and distillery.  In 1857, he issued the first 
number of the Waterville Times.  This is still a prosperous and in-
fluential paper.  In the fall of 1859, he was the Democratic nominee
for the Legislature in the Second District of Oneida County.  He was
defeated, but polled a larger vote than his party in every town.  In
January, 1860, he moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, where he resumed the
practice of law.  He was an ardent supporter of Stephen A. Douglas 
for the Presidency, and made many able speeches in his advocacy. 
During the civil war, he was a strong Union man.  In February, 1862,
he began the publication of the St. Joseph Morning Herald, a journal
which immediately presented the stamp of his commanding genius, and
soon became what it is today, a representative journal and organ of
the Republican party in this part of the state.  In August, 1862, he
was appointed Internal Revenue Collector for the Third District of
Missouri, embracing all that portion of the state lying north of the
Missouri River, and including forty-four counties.  The taxes collec-
ted amounted to about one million dollars per annum.  On December 27,
1866, he married Miss Elizabeth Smith, who is still living.  A short
time previously he had been elected a member of the Twenty fourth 
General Assembly of Missouri.  In 1875, while Collector of the Sixth
District of Missouri, in consequence of the irregularities of some of
his employees, he was charged with being connected with the whisky
frauds.  Despairing in the complications that existed of obtaining 
justice, he left the country and visited Australia.  In September, 
1876, Mr. Wilkinson having returned to Missouri, all the cases against
him were dismissed save the one for embezzlement, of which he was con-
victed on a technicality.  Such was the nature of the case, however,
that after a careful examination of the same by the Attorney General 
and the President, a full pardon was granted as a matter of right.  
Neither Mr. Wilkinson's political friends nor political enemies
believed him guilty of any criminal intent.  In June, 1878, he was 
given sole charge of the St. Joseph Gazette, which he continued to
edit with his wonted ability for some time.  He afterwards moved to
Denver, Colorado, where he died January 14, 1881.  Charles B. 
Wilkinson was certainly a man of versatile genius and remarkable 
mental resources, as well as of generous impulses.  A finished and
accurate scholar as well as an eminently practical man, as a journal-
ist, he had no superior and few equals, anywhere.

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