Charles E. Lennan Biography This biography appears on pages 1735-1736 in "History of South Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. II (1904) and was scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net. This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. CHARLES E. LENNAN, one of the successful and highly esteemed real- estate dealers of Bowdle, Edmunds county, is a scion of staunch old colonial stock, of Scotch-Irish origin, and is himself a native of the old Pine Tree state, having been born in Belfast, Waldo county, Maine, on the 14th of December, 1848, and being a son of Ansel and Mary (Maxey) Lennan, both of whom were likewise born and reared in that noble old New England commonwealth. David Lennan, grandfather of the subject, was one of the largest owners of timber lands in Maine, where he met with heavy financial losses at the time of the Moosehead lake speculation, his loss having footed up to fully fifty thousand dollars in the connection through his endorsing security papers. The father of the subject was for many years deputy collector of customs at Belfast, Maine, was for several years a pension agent, and also devoted no little attention to the buying of raw furs, passing the last twenty years of his life in the city of Bangor, where his wife also died. The father, an old-line Democrat, wielded no little influence in political affairs in his native state and was a man of the highest integrity and honor in all the relations of life. Of his two children the subject of this review is the younger. Charles E. Lennan secured his early educational discipline in the public schools of Maine, which he attended until he had attained the age of nineteen years. He then engaged in the ship brokerage and commission business, and later as shipper and dealer in baled hay and farm produce at I3angor, Maine, also operating quite heavily in the same lines in New Brunswick, building up a most successful business, in which he continued for some time. From 1880 he was engaged in the wholesale and produce business in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. In the spring of 1883 he came to what is now the state of South Dakota and took up government land twelve miles northwest of the present town of Blunt, in Hughes county, returning to Boston in the autumn of 1884. There he established himself as selling agent in the wholesale hay business, with the firm of Scott & Bridge, extensive operators in the line. In the autumn of 1885 he located at Crown Point, Indiana, with the intention of shipping hay from that point to eastern markets, but one month later decided to again come to South Dakota. He invested in land at Scranton, Walworth county, and found the investment entailed a total loss. He then came to the present site of Bowdle, where he in a sense brought in the first building in the embryonic village, having originally erected said building at a point one and one-half miles southwest, and having hauled the same to the new site. In this building he established himself in the real-estate business. The years 1886 and 1887 proved hard ones in the state, and all of the real-estate dealers located on the railroad at points west of Ipswich were practically starved out by reason of lack of patronage and general business stagnation, but Mr. Lennan weathered the storm and finally found his anchorage secure. He has succeeded in building up a very prosperous business and is known. as one of the leading real-estate men of this section of the state. He also makes a specialty of the extension of financial loans upon, real-estate security. In politics he gives his allegiance to the Republican party and fraternally is identified with the Masonic order, in which he has received the degrees of the lodge and chapter. On the 26th of December, 1896, Mr. Lennan was united in marriage to Miss Hortense B. Kennedy, who was born in Illinois, and reared in Kansas of which state her foster-brother is governor at the time of this writing.