CHARLES H. CHAPMAN, the well-known and esteemed veteran newspaper man of Sault Sainte Marie and a member of the popular law firm of McDonald & Chapman, descended from Danish ancestors who left Jutland about the middle of the fourth century and united themselves with the Britons, thus contributing their blood toward the formation of the Anglo-Saxon race. The name was preserved all through the ages. Some years prior to the American Revolution, one Edgar Chapman emigrated to the New World and took up his abode in Connecticut. One of his descendants, probably a son, Ichabod Chapman, fought in this American army for independence. As a civilian, he was a farmer. In 1818 he moved to Genesee county, New York, near Batavia, and opened a new farm. He died there about 1830, at the age of eighty-five years. One of his sons was Amasa D. Chapman, born in Colchester, Connecticut November 11, 1796. he spent his life in the main as a farmer, but during his young manhood, he was a teacher. He graduated at Bacon's Academy in Connecticut in 1816 and went to Genesee county, New York with his father. In 1835 he was commissioned Captain of militia by the Governor of that State. He came to Michigan in 1837 and settled on a farm in Oakland county. This farm he cultivated until the spring of 1855, when he moved to Cumberland county, Kentucky, remaining there four years and a half, and then returning to Oakland county, where he died December 4, 1882. He was greatly interested in the education of the young, and for twenty-one consecutive years was Moderator in his school district. He was the father of nine children by Hannah L. Hunt, whose family went to New York from Vermont. Six of their children survive, viz.: Joseph, George, and Ichabod, in Oakland county; Albert, an attache of Representative Hall, Lansing; Edgar C., Pontaic; and Charles H.
Charles H. Chapman was born April 9, 1855. He attended the district schools until he was fifteen years of age, when he entered the office of the old Pontiac Jacksonia, published by D.H. Solis, and began his journalistic career. He worked on the Saginaw Daily Courier one year, was for three years with the Pontiac Bill Poster, next on the force of the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, and afterward did reporturial work and typesetting on many papers in Ohio and southern Illinois. Finally returning to Michigan, he resumed work on the Saginaw Courier. In 1876 he established the Pontiac Commercial, which he conducted until July, 1882, the date of his coming to Sault Ste. Marie. Here he became associated with William Chandler in the publication of the Chippewa County News, as editor and joint proprietor, which relation he sustained until November, 1887. In the meantime he was appointed Deputy State Oil Inspector, and was President of the Village of Sault Sainte Marie in 1886 and 1887, being the last incumbent of that office. In November, 1888, he was elected by the Republicans to the office of the Register of Deeds for Chippewa county, and served two years. Just before his term expired he entered into an arrangement with Messrs Webster and Stradley to purchase the Soo Herald. They changed its name to Sault Sainte Marie Tribune, and its politics to Republican, and published in April, 1892, when it was consolidated with the Soo News, and Mr. Chapman passed out of the newspaper arena.
In November, 1892, the subject of our sketch was the Republican candidate for the Legislature, but was defeated by seventy-eight votes, while the head of the Democratic ticket in the district showed a majority of over 400. January 1, 1893, Mr. Chapman was appointed by the Secretary of State as Assistant Chief of the Department of Agriculture, and eight months later he was promoted to Chief of the Corporation department. While in Lansing he perfected his law studies, was admitted by the Supreme Court, March 12, 1895, and resigned the last week in the same month to return to this city. Here he at once engaged in the practice of law, becoming a member of the firm of McDonald & Chapman.
April 27, 1878, Mr. Chapman was married, in Pontiac, Michigan, to Miss Mollie B., daughter of Nicholas Nott, who came to this country from Cornwall, England. They had two children, both of whom are deceased, one dying at the age of four years and the other at sixteen months.
Mr. Chapman is a Knight Templar and a Knight of Pythias, and both he and his wife are identified with the Episcopal Church
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