Charles, who at the age of seventeen, became a printer's apprentice at New London and two years later came to take charge of his father's farm in Susquehanna county, soon abandoned farming and removed to Wilkes-Barre where he joined his brother Asher in the publishing of the Luzerne County Federalist, purchasing Asher's interest in 1804, and becoming a prominent figure on political affairs; serving in the town council; one of the original trustees and founders of Wilkes-Barre Academy; many years a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, and extremely active and influential in legislation of the utmost importance to the growing state; part owner and editor of the True American, in Philadelphia, in 1816; proprietor and editor of the Village Record at West Chester, Pennsylvania, 1817-1832; member of Congress 1825-1828; returned to Wilkes-Barre in 1832, and followed literary pursuits; died there, October 26, 1865; author of "History of Wyoming," and a prolific writer on many subjects.
He married in 1804, Letitia Wright, and had four daughters and one son; William Penn. Miner, lawyer and journalist of Wilkes-Barre, author of "History of the Coal Trade in Luzerne and Lackawanna Valleys," etc., died 1892.
Charles Miner was one of the most original and influential of the Pennsylvania editors of the first third of the nineteenth century. He was an early promoter of the anthracite coal trade, and of canals, as a part of internal improvement. As a State legislator his influence ranged between fields as widely apart as compulsory vaccination and the regulation of bank currency. He made the first persistent, long-continued effort on the floor of the House looking toward the final extinction of slavery.
Like Franklin, by his essays he made sounder the life of his time. He wrote, from original investigations, the standard history, never to be displaced, of the Wyoming Valley, the massacre of July 3, 1778, and the long-disputed land-claims of Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Finally, and most enduring of all, he coined the phrase most current to-day on the lips of thousands of Americans — "to have an ax to grind".
Charles, the youngest of four children, was born in Norwich (now Norwich Old Town, two miles from the river settlement), Connecticut, on the first day of February, 1780.
In the first year of the new century, "being of age," says the Miner's Autobiography, "I became a citizen of Pennsylvania. My purpose now was to associate myself with the press, if possible ;" but after settling the poor finances of clearings, the need of earning his living, turned him to school-teaching for six months, in Wilkes-Barre, where he boarded with his brother Asher. In retrospect he writes: "It would be superfluous to say that Wilkes-Barre has wonderfully changed since it first met my view. The ferry was kept opposite Northampton street, in front of Mr. Butler's. Starting from the ferry, turning up that street (towards Faston) to Main Street, there was on the left hand only one house, that of Mr. Dupuy. Turning up Main Street to the Public Square, there was on the left, only one house, the tavern, now occupied as such. Turning northwesterly along the Public Square, to Market Street, and thence down to where the bridge now stands, there was not a house on the left. .Wither the meeting-house nor the court-house [afterwards ted in the Public Square] was then built. Franklin Street, on which are the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, was not then laid out. From the Public Square to the river, on the right side of the way. was the building now [1844] Cahoon's store, then occupied by Joseph Vmght, Esq. The house recently occupied by Col. Lamb, at the corner, my brother had obtained of his father-in-law, part gift and part as a purchase, where he resided and had the printing-office. A small one-story house stood on the lot now occupied by the large hotel of Col. Dennis of which I shall speak presently; and at the corner opposite Mr. Hollenback's large brick building was a tavern owned by Thomas Wright and kept by Mr. Hurlbut, not long since sheriff. The town plot was yet covered with pine and oak bushes." Mr. Miner soon afterward rented the one-story house and kit mentioned above, — seventy feet front and a hundred deep, for twenty dollars a year, with to purchase for $200.
"But the portraiture and sketches illustrative of men and manners as they appeared in Wilkes-Barre forty years ago, are not yet half finished. Nearly a dozen of the elder personages, Gen. Lord Butler, Judges Hollenback, Denison and Fell, Lawyer Bowman, Capt. S. Bowman, Sheriff Dorrance, Nathan Palmer, Prothonotary, and others, I have sketched elsewhere and may possibly append the brief but pretty accurate pictures, to these memoirs. Familiar to many of my readers they are now omitted or postponed to make way for a view of more youthful society.
"Brother Asher never pretended to sing unless the chorus to 'Adams and Liberty' or 'Hail Columbia' on the 4th of July, and as for myself, with snatches of a line or two, of almost every song I had heard, 'Tom Bowling' was the only one I could sing, when there was no escape, and that I never got through with correctly ..." Then follows a description of men of business, commissioners, lawyers trooping out to the river bank to play base ball, or trying to who could go straightest, blindfolded, from Anheuser's store to the broadside of the church: "Poor sinners that we were, not one in ten could reach the church."
"It was not the fashion of the day and place for the young men to herd by themselves, drinking, smoking or gambling. I never knew an instance among our young men of one goingh into a tavern to ask for a small glass or a large one. The first thought of amusement for the evening brought with it the enquiry where shall we meet the girls— do they take tea at Mr. Carpenter's, Mr. Brown's. Mr. Lathrop's, Mr. Nevin's or Mr. Huntington's— If at neither us gather them together."
"The year 1804 was especially memorable to me for four circumstances. Married, January 16th. In May brother Asher and I dissolved business connections, I purchasing the establishment and becoming sole proprietor of the Luzerne Federalist. On the 24th of October new and tenderest sympathies were awakened by the birth of a daughter whom we named Anna Charlton, after my beloved Mother, and Nov. 3 the death of that Mother, of whom I have often spoken, and of whom it is impossible for me to speak without emotions of deepest veneration and love. She died of consumption aged 60 years.
CHARLES MINER'S FAMILY.
Charles Miner, born at Norwich, Conn., Feb. 1, 1780; died at Plains Township. Pa., Oct. 26, 1865.
Letitia Wright, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., June 8, 1788; married Charles Miner, Jan. 16, 1804; died at Plains Township, Pa., Feb. 27, 1852.
CHILDREN :
Ann Charlton, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Oct. 24, 1804; married Dr. Isaac Thomas, of West Chester, Pa. ; died at West Chester, Pa., Mar. 23, 1832.
Sarah Kirkbride, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., June 4, 1806; died at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Jan. 14, 1874.
Mary Sinton, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., July 16, 1808; married Joseph Jackson Lewis, of West Chester, Pa , died at West Chester, Pa., Oct. 2y, i860.
Charlotte, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., June 30, 1810; mar-ried Stephen Fuller Abbott, of Plains Township, Pa. ; died at Plains Township, Pa., July 28, 1859.
Letitia Wright, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., 1812; died at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Aug. 14, 1813.
Ellen Elizabeth, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Aug. 14, 1814; married Jesse Thomas, of West Chester, Pa.; died at Laurel Run, Pa., Mar. 25, 1913, in her 99th year.
William Penn. born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Sept. 8, 1816; married Elizabeth Dewart Liggett, of West Chester, Pa. ; died at Miner's Mills (formerly Plains Township). Pa., April 3, 1892.
Francis Cope, born at West Chester, Pa., May 12. 1818; died at West Chester, Pa., Sept. 6, 1820.
Emily Hollenback, born at West Chester, Pa., Aug. 12. 1821 ; died at West Chester, Pa.. Aug. 27, 1822.
Charles Townsend, born at West Chester, Pa., Dec. 19, 1823 ; died at West Chester, Pa., Feb. 23, 1824.
