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Biographies | 1896 Bios

CHARLES ASHTON, editor of The Guthrian, at Guthrie Center, Iowa, was born in Lincolnshire, England, June 2, 1823. His parents emigrated to this country in 1832 and settled on a farm in Richland county, Ohio, where he grew up to manhood, having only the slight educational advantages of the district school of that place and period for parts of three winter terms. In his twenty-second year he was happily married to Miss Mary, daughter of James and Mary Haverfield, of the same neighborhood, her birth having occurred on the farm on which they were married. After their marriage they settled on a piece of woodland in Hardin county, Ohio, to clear a farm, with the expectation that farming would be their life work.

In 1852, associating himself with a brother, he entered the drug and book business, locating in Kenton, the county seat of Hardin county, Ohio. Soon thereafter he was licensed as a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1860 entered the itinerant work. In October, 1861, he met with a severe accident that crippled him for life. In the fall of 1864 he renewed itinerant labor, and in the fall of 1870 was transferred from the Central Ohio to the Des Moines Annual Conference of that church and did nine years effective work in western Iowa. Retiring from the itinerant field in the spring of 1879, he assumed the editorship of The Guthrian, a Republican paper published at Guthrie Center, Iowa, and in that position has now done seventeen years' efficient work for his party and society, continuing his membership in the Des Moines Annual Conference, in a superannuated relation.

In the early months of 1879 he originated the project of the Guthrie & Northwestern Railroad, the branch of the Rock Island now running from Menlo to Guthrie Center, and was instrumental in the organization of the company which effected the building of that road. He was elected president of the company, and devoted faithful and persistent work to effect the construction of the road, which was built in the summer of 1880.

In 1891 he was appointed by the executive council of the State of Iowa the member of the Iowa Columbian Commission for the Ninth Congressional District of the State, and in that office he ably and industriously served. As chairman of the archeological, historical and statistical committee of the commission he wrote and superintended the publication and distribution of The Hand Book of Iowa, of which 25,000 copies were published and distributed. The work received high praise. In August, as a member of the horticultural committee of the commission, he was given the superintendency of the horticultural exhibit, and under his direction and encouragement Iowa made one of the very finest pomological displays shown in the great Chicago exposition of the world's resources and productions.

In his early manhood he advocated the emancipation of the slave, and early, with voice, example and pen, advocated total abstinence from the use of whatever would intoxicate. From the organization of the Republican party he favored its principles with inflexible fortitude. Throughout his manhood he has ever been known as an advocate of sobriety and good government and the promotion of all liberal enterprises and the best possible educational interests in the communities in which he has resided.

June 26, 1895, Mr. and Mrs. Ashton celebrated the golden anniversary of their wedded life. To them in that life, eleven children--seven sons and four daughters--were born. Six of the sons and three of the daughters yet survive.

A Memorial and Biographical Record of Iowa, Chicago, The Lewis Publishing Company 1896, pg. 185.

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