Biography - Beaverhead County, MT Submitted by: Lorene Frigaard lorfri99@bmi.net Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm MONTANA, ITS STORY AND BIOGRAPHY: A History of Aboriginal and Territorial Montana and Three Decades of Statehood. Vols. I-III. Edited by Tom Stout. Published in Chicago and New York by The American Historical Society, 1921 Pages 423-424: CHARLES S. TRUAX. To the ordinary man perhaps a very small portion of the adventures and activities that have been developing elements in the life of Charles S. Truax, now mayor of the City of Lima, Montana, would seem sufficient as experience. Thrown on his own resources when twelve years old, the seventh member in a large family where worldly goods were not abundant, he had no influential friends to advance him. He had, however, endowments of courage, persistence and faith in himself from his sturdy old Holland ancestry. These have carried him through to financial independence, personal esteem and political honors. Charles S. Truax was born at Baraboo, Wisconsin, February 2, 1857. His parents were W.D. and Sarah (Gibbons) Truax, the former of whom was born in 1830 in Vermont, and died at Marblerock, Floyd County, Iowa, in 1897, and the later, born in England, in 1837, died at Breckenridge, Minnesota, in 1912. The father of Mr. Truax came to Wisconsin when a young man, and at Waterford in that state was married to Sarah Gibbons, who had accompanied her parents from England in 1840. She was reared and educated well in Michigan. To this marriage the following children were born: Cynthia, who resides at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, married first Luke Knapp, and second a Mr. Miller, who is also deceased; John H., who lives in Iowa, is a blacksmith by trade; Sarah, who died young; W.E., who was a physician and surgeon, died at San Diego, California; May, who died in Iowa in 1894, was the wife of Reverend Baldwin, a Methodist minister, also deceased; Laura, who is the wife of Mr. Van Anthrop, a cabinetmaker at Williston, North Dakota; Charles S., who is the only member of the family in Montana; Emma, who is the wife of Wilson Pearsall, a rancher near Spokane, Washington; Clara, who is deceased; W.A., who is a ranchman in California; Bert, who died when young; Nellie, who is the wife of Casper Thein, auditor of the Northern Pacific Railway, lives at St. Paul, Minnesota; and Maggie, who is deceased. After marriage the parents of Mayor Truax settled at Baraboo, Wisconsin, where the father was the pioneer blacksmith. He had gone over the plains with ox teams in search of gold in California, but was taken sick and after a year of mining returned to Wisconsin by way of the Panama route, not having met with much success as a prospector. In 1864 he moved to Marblerock, Iowa, and there worked at his trade during the rest of his life. He was a democrat in politics and a member of the Masonic fraternity. He was always very proud of the fact that his was an old American family of Holland descent, his ancestors coming to New York with Peter Stuyvesant. Charles S. Truax’s school days ended when he was twelve years old. He then left home and went to Sioux City, Iowa, where he hired out as a cabin boy on a steamboat called the Miner, which operated between Sioux City and Fort Benton. He worked through the season and then went into the Wisconsin woods and worked in lumber camps for three seasons. After coming West he drove a freight team at Omaha, Nebraska, for a season, then went back home for a visit. Finding no favorable business opening in the home village, he once more turned his face westward. He reached Kansas in the year following the grasshopper invasion and as the next season proved one of great [drought] he decided after a trial of eighteen months at farming that he would turn his attention to something else. In 1878 he drove a team from Beloit, Kansas, to Denver, Colorado, in which city he sold his team and went to Gunnison, during the gold excitement, did some prospecting there and found work in a sawmill making railroad ties. In the fall of 1879 he returned to Denver, went from there to Golden, Colorado, and at that place worked for eighteen months in the smelter, following which for a year he operated a dairy. Then began his connection with railroading, and he was a fireman on the Union Pacific until the fall of 1884, when he was transferred from Denver to Eagle Rock on the Utah Northern in Idaho, arriving there December 26, 1884. On January 1, 1885, he came into Montana, stopping at the division point called Spring Hill, now the City of Lima, of which he was the mayor and a prominent citizen. He continued to work for the railroad as a locomotive engineer until 1909. He then bought the Peat Hotel at Lima, which is the leading hotel in this section of Beaverhead County, and has continuously conducted it ever since with the exception of five years when he lived at Portland, Oregon, where he owns a find modern residence. He also has a dwelling house at Lima and a valuable ranch located one and a half miles from the city. On April 14, 1878, Mayor Truax was united in marriage to Miss Francelia Russell, at Marblerock, Iowa. Mrs. Truax died June 14, 1914, at Portland, Oregon. She was a daughter of William and Maria (Smith) Russell, the former of whom was an extensive farmer in Iowa and in Kansas and died near Beloit in Mitchell County, Kansas. Four children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Truax, as follows: L.H., who is a graduate of the Montana Normal College at Dillon, Montana, is a resident of Lima and is proprietor of the leading garage in southern Beaverhead County; Daniel, who died at the age of eighteen months; Grace C., who is a graduate of the Montana Normal College, has been a stenographer in the assessor’s office at Dillon since her return from Washington City, where she spent seven months working for the government during the World war; and Cora, who was educated in the Montana Normal College, died at Portland, Oregon, when aged but twenty-one years. Always a democrat in politics, Mr. Truax has served his party faithfully. In April, 1918, he was elected Mayor of Lima. He is very active in the order of Knights of Pythias, is past chancellor commander of Delta Lodge and is a member of the Grand Lodge of the order in Montana.