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Note: Because his mother died shortly after his birth, and his uncle and aunt William & Christina Geller raised Charles. She was able to nurse him as she had recently lost her newborn baby. When he was about 9, his father asked to have Charles back, but Wilhelm & Christina were so attached to him that they did not want to give him up. To avoid doing this Wilhelm moved his family to Oregon. Charles only saw his Fort Wayne relatives once after that - in 1915 just before the death of his father Theodore.
Charles's family was opposed to his marriage to Mabry McCown because of her poor health (she was diagnosed as having tuberculosis.) They lived first in Portland, then in Eugene for several years, where he served as secretary to the Water Board. In 1919 they went to Texas to live. Because the schools were so poor there, in Aug, 1923 they started back for Oregon, visiting relatives in California along the way (Charles' uncle in Southern California, and Mabry's sisters Tot and Geody in Berkeley.) As a result of these visits, Charles accepted a job on the Pitt River Project for Pacific Gas & Electric near Burney Falls, in Northern California. Because they were 75 miles from the nearest school their son Charles stayed with his aunts to attend Junior and Senior High School in Berkeley. Then ten years were spent in Sutter Creek where Charles was in charge of the warehouse system for PGE's Salt Springs project. Charles and Mabry moved to Davis, California in 1936 where they lived the remainder of their lives.
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