Andrew Washington Charlton

NOTABLE AMONG THE FORMER LAWMEN buried in the Old Tonopah Cemetery is Andrew Washington Charlton, who served as a private in Company C of the 42nd Missouri Infantry during the Civil War and later became a long-time sheriff of Lake County, Oregon.

Charlton was born on April 8, 1848, in Fairfield, Iowa. Struck by gold fever, his father and two brothers set out for California with ox teams, but after encountering cholera along the route, they altered their plans and settled in Oregon’s Willamette Valley in 1850. In 1853, Charlton’s father moved the family again, this time to Missouri, by covered wagon, though the family returned to Oregon in 1866.

Charlton was an eighteen-year-old farmer on August 11, 1864, when he enlisted at Unionville, Missouri, for a one-year term of service in the Union Army during the Civil War. After the expiration of his enlistment, he moved to Surprise Valley in Siskiyou County, California, where, in 1870 at the age of twenty-two, he was employed as a laborer on the farm of his uncle, Charles Charlton.

By 1880, Andrew had established his home in Santiam, Linn County, Oregon, where he lived with his wife, Martha Jane Moore, and the first two of their six children. He farmed and also served four terms as sheriff of Lake County. Eventually, gold fever seized him as well. On March 4, 1898, the Albany Democrat reported that Charlton and E. E. Emerson had departed for the Klondike with a four-horse outfit. In a letter to his father written that November, Charlton stated: “I shall stay this winter and next summer and take my chances along with the rest. If I don’t strike something I will go back to Lake County. I know I can make a living there, and my family have plenty of grub to last till then. I may go back broke, but I can go back the way I came—walk.”

Charlton did return home. The April 12, 1901, edition of the Alturas New Era noted that he spent the winter driving the Alturas-to-Lakeview (Oregon) stage line, but left for a trip to Reno and “may not return home for some time.” In a private letter to a friend, he described Reno as “the best town I have seen since leaving Alaska,” though he added that he had made arrangements to return to the Klondike the following May.

It appears he never made that return. By 1902, Charlton was living in Alturas, California, where he began a new venture as a timberman. In 1903, “having met with reverses,” according to one newspaper account, he went to Tonopah at the age of fifty-four to prospect for silver, having acquired what was described as a “valuable mining property”. There, at 11:30 p.m. on January 13, 1905, he died at the age of fifty-seven, reportedly during what was then feared to be an outbreak of the “Black Plague,” but which was later determined to be pneumonia.

An account of Andrew Charlton’s funeral, published in the Albany (Oregon) Democrat, read in part:

“On Monday, January 16, at 2 p.m., the bugle sounded the ‘assembly,’ and his loyal old grey-haired comrades, veterans of the Grand Army, answered its imperious note and gathered at the Masonic Hall to render their last touching and solemn expressions of respect in honor of their departed brother-in-arms. Many members of the Masonic fraternity, to which he also belonged, were present and rendered an impressive tribute to the worth and uprightness of the brother who has passed beyond, to that bourne whence no traveler hath ever returned.

“Mr. Smith, on behalf of the Masonic Order, delivered a few well-chosen and sympathetic remarks, followed by Attorney Richard Fox, a veteran and Mason, who contributed a very beautiful and fitting eulogy upon the deceased. After the ceremonies at the hall, the funeral cortege proceeded to the cemetery, where, in a lot owned by the Grand Army, the earthly remains of A. W. Charlton were laid tenderly and reverently to rest.

“At the conclusion of the service, silently the firing squad stepped forward and, standing beneath the crepe-decked flag, fired three volleys over the grave of the dead patriot. Then, even while the blue smoke still hovered in wavering and ever-widening circles over the bowed heads of the mourners, there arose upon the calm wintry air the plaintive notes of ‘Taps,’ echoing and re-echoing among the rocky cliffs, softer and still more softly, dying at last in a faint murmuring chord. A great silence followed, and the last sad rites were ended. Softly sleep, O Brother, and when the sound of the last ‘Reveille’ shall rouse thee from thy peaceful and well-earned rest, may we meet again to enjoy eternal life and peace forevermore.”

Andrew was survived by his wife and six children.