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Note: Karl (Charles) was born at home and was baptized on June 22, 1890 at the Zion Lutheran Church. The godparents were Hunrich Westphal and Maria Schmidt. His preferred name was Charles or Charlie. He was a farmer and dairy herdsman. He liked to collect Indian artifacts he found on his land. A community meeting place for the farmers of the area was Gleaners Hall in Romeoville along highway US 66 (later as famed "Route 66"). Charlie and Hulda would go to the dances and bingo games that occurred every other week, but they preferred to play cards instead of dancing. Dances were held every other week and a keg of beer would be purchased in Joliet and driven to the hall, to be served in the basement of the hall, with dancing on the main floor. Electrification reached rural Will County in the early 1940's. Not until early in 1948 did Hulda and Charlie convert the huge walk-in pantry to an indoor bathroom just off the dining room of the farmhouse. One of Charlie's greatest joys was plowing at local plowing matches with antique tractors and plows restored by his son Lloyd. He won several antique plowing matches and was very proud of the pictures and trophies from those competitions. He won the antique tractor class at the Wheatland Plowing Match in 1966, when he already had some painful metastatic tumors from a bladder cancer that took his life a year and a half later. He also had an extensive dairy herd, and later kept Angus cattle on the woods pasture in a cooperative venture with Allan. Charlie would call to the cows, "Here, Boss - Here, Boss" and the dairy cattle would come running to him. Rather than shift to less labor-intensive, modern methods of crop production in the mid to late 1960s to use liberal applications of chemical fertilizers and herbicides, he continued the traditional land-enhancing practices of crop rotation between alfalfa and clover hay, soybeans, and corn rotation combined with removal of weeds and volunteer corn in soybeans by frequent precision cultivation and hoeing. He carefully maintained the 40 acres of woods as well, but with great concern for preservation of its Indian burial mounds. Whenever he found Indian artifacts by walking his fields, woods or neighboring fields, he added them to the collection he had received from Hulda's parents and his father. When Charlie was sick with cancer, the woods slowly began to return to nature. He continued to farm and care for the farm as best he could for the next two years, but in the final year of his life he was very much weakened by the spreading cancer. The unchecked bladder cancer resulted in a slow, lingering, and painful death at Edwards Hospital in Naperville, IL. He died at the age of 77 years, 11 months, and 5 days. He was laid to rest in the Hillcrest Cemetery (Bolingbrook, IL), known as Barbers Corner Cemetery due to the implement business by that name that used to be immediately adjacent to it on IL Highway 53 (Du Page Township, Will County, IL). --Written by his grandson, Gene Erickson Adra Erickson Wallin, his niece, had this to say about him: "Charlie didn't have an unusual life, but his wife's father did - he hung himself! He got the rope and set everything up in the barn after supper one evening. Then he went to bed as usual. The next morning he got up early, went out in the barn, put the rope around his neck, put his hat back on, and hung himself. When he didn't come in for breakfast, his wife went out and found him in the barn. She (Aunt Hulda) always said that her father was 'a big coward.'" Census info: 1920: DuPage Twp, Will Co, IL - Charles (29) and Hulda (26) live with their son Lloyd (2) and a hired man named William Affeldt. Charles is a farmer on a rented farm. 1930: DuPage Twp, Will Co, IL - Charles (40) and Hulda (37) live with their sons Lloyd (12), Allen (9), and Richard (6). They own a radio set. They were married at ages 25 (him) and 23 (her). Charles' brother Robert lives nearby. Most of the neighbors are of German heritage. Charles and Hulda were both born in Illinois; his father/mother were born in Germany/Illinois, and hers in Illinois/Pennsylvania. Charlie is a farmer and not a war veteran. Charles' WWI draft registration card (1917) says that he is 27 years old, a farmer, married, born on March 19, 1890, and was "tall, medium build, gray eyes, brown hair" with no physical disablities. He claims exemption from the draft on the grounds that he has a wife and dependents. He gives his name as "Charles Erickson Jr."
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