Charles Robert Acorn
World War I Veteran
By Camille Arbogast
Charles Robert Acorn was born on May 23, 1895, at 116 Webster Street in East Boston to Charles E. and Sarah (White) Acorn. Charles, Sr., was born in Boston. Sarah was born in England and immigrated to the United States in the late 1870s. Charles and Sarah were married in Chelsea in 1887. They had three other children: Claire born in 1888, Beatrice in 1889, and Ronald in 1906. Beatrice died at one month old of cholera infantum.
Charles, Sr., was a mariner. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, he was a steamboat pilot and a member of Harbor No.4, American Brotherhood of Steamboat Pilots. In 1896, he sold his small harbor towboat Cadet. By 1905, he was serving as the mate of the Relief, lightship No. 58 in the lighthouse service, earning $800 a year. That December, the ship sank 18 miles west of Nantucket. In his attempt to save the ship, Charles, Sr., “repeatedly performed an act of heroism …. When the suction of the pumps was impaired and the water put out the fires, he repeatedly dove under the water in the hold and cleared away the coal which choked the hand pumps. He was struck on the head by floating planks was almost drowned, while his fingers were fearfully torn, but he declined to turn the task over to others.” He survived, but, like all the men on the ship, when the vessel sank he was left unemployed until he could be assigned to another lightship. He was still in the lighthouse service in 1908, but appears to have changed jobs not long after, as the 1910 census reported he was the captain of a tramp steamer. By 1920, he was a mariner with the United States Service and a member of the North Sea Mine Force Association.
By 1898, the Acorns had moved around the corner from Charles’s birthplace to 33 Cottage Street. The next year they lived at 9 Bennington Street in East Boston. They had relocated to Dorchester by 1902, residing at 6 Shafter Street, where they remained for fifteen years. The 1910 census reported that Claire and her husband of three years, Saxon Dale Williams, were part of the household. Saxon was a professional bike racer. Thought by his fans to be “one of the fastest riders who ever straddled a wheel,” he held multiple world records. Saxon had been married before, having wed in Utah in 1904 and divorced by 1906.
Charles graduated from the Oliver Wendell Holmes School on School Street in Dorchester in 1909. He also attended four years of high school, according to the 1940 census. Employed by 1916, Charles spent his career working at newspapers, primarily as a linotype operator. A hot metal typesetting system, the linotype machine cast entire lines of metal type. Charles typed text on a keyboard and the text would be cast from molten metal. These lines of text would then be set into the press for printing. Invented in the late 19th century, linotype was much faster than the previous method of laying out type letter by letter. In June 1917, Charles reported he was a proofreader for the Boston Financial News of 84 State Street.
Charles was inducted into the Army on July 15, 1918. He entered the service in Providence, Rhode Island, and served in the Training Detachment at Brown University. That summer, Brown University hosted a “vocational contingent of320 mechanics” who, during the summer of 1918, trained “at pattern and machine shops at Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. The mechanics slept on government cots in the Lyman Gymnasium, ate at the union, and worked six hours a day in the machine shops… After two months of instruction, the men were ready for service as carpenters, machinists, wireless telegraphers, or automobile mechanics.” It is probable that Charles was part of this training program.
On September 12, 1918, he was transferred to the 2nd Ordnance Supply Company, Depot Brigade, at the Ordnance Operations, Maintenance & Repair Schools at the Raritan Arsenal in Metuchen, New Jersey. At the school, students could study general skills needed for military service such as blacksmithing, welding, woodworking, auto and tractor repair. There were also studies in specialized ordnance-focused topics like explosives, artillery repair, and “small arms and machine guns.” According to his service record, he remained with this organization until his discharge on December 17, 1918.
After the war, Charles returned to live with his family. The Acorns had moved a few blocks to 44 West Tremlett Street in 1917. After the war, Charles lived there, resuming his career as a linotyper. He worked for the Boston Herald-Traveler, his employer for the rest of his life. Charles’s siblings were also living in the family home. Claire was working as a collector for the Boston Elevated Railroad. It appears that her relationship with Saxon had ended. In June 1920, Saxon remarried in Buffalo, New York. He eventually died “on the wheel,” when he collapsed on a bike track in Los Angeles in 1934.
On June 27, 1922, Charles married Florence Mildred Jones in Dorchester. Born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, in 1922, Florence lived at 56 Thetford Street and worked as a gold cutter. Charles and Florence were married by Reverend Arthur W. Shaw of Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, 73 Columbia Road, Dorchester. Their son Robert Ivan was born in 1925.
The couple initially lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 38 Royal Avenue in the Huron Village neighborhood. By 1927, they had moved to Waltham, Massachusetts, where they lived at 21 Marlborough Road. They moved a short distance to 4 Pearl Street in the Waverly neighborhood of Belmont, Massachusetts, in 1929. By 1932, they had moved a few blocks to 15 Jonathan Street, Belmont.
In 1928, Charles was a founding board member and the first treasurer of the Boston Typographical Union’s credit union, which was headquartered at 53 Hanover Street. He was also active in the Typographical Union. In September 1931, he sang at the union’s annual convention held at the Hotel Bradford in Boston. The Boston Globe coverage of the convention reported, “One of the entertainment features to be furnished by Local 13 is the ‘Typo’ Glee Club, headed by Charles Acorn, which is working hard to be ready to greet visitors from each State in the Union and from Canada with favorite songs of their States.”
Florence died in July 1932. After her death, Charles and his son moved in with his sister at 31 Wollaston Avenue in Quincy. Claire had married two more times: first, in 1927, to Joseph Fawcett, a mariner 27 years her senior, then to William Morely Nelson. Nelson died in 1939. Also living at 31 Wollaston Avenue were Charles’s mother, Sarah, and Claire’s teenage son, Crosley Fawcett. By 1942, the household had moved to 32 Briggs Street in Quincy, where Charles lived for the rest of his life, with his sister, Claire. His son married in 1952 and his mother died in 1956. In the 1940s and 1950s, Charles was an active member of the Boylston Chess Club, serving as its president from 1940 until 1957.
Charles died in Quincy at the age of 62 on January 16, 1958. His obituary ran in the Boston Herald where he was a compositor for 34 years. In it, it states, “ he was the oldest active member of the [Emmanuel Church] choir. He was also active as a volunteer worker at the Young Men’s Christian Union on Boylston St. He had been made an honorary life member in recognition of his efforts for that organization. He was president of the chess club at the union and was an active Mason with the Belmont Lodge.” In 1961, the Boylston Chess Club held the first of a “proposed annual series of tournaments” in his memory. He was survived by his two sons, Robert and Ronald and was buried in the Mount Wollaston Cemetery in Quincy.
Sources
Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, MA; Ancestry.com
Family Trees; Ancestry.com
“East Boston,” Boston Globe, 21 February 1888:2; Newspapers.com
“Along the Water Front.,” Boston Post, 19 May 1896:8; Newspapers.com
“Pay Stopped as Lightship Sank,” Boston Globe, 14 December 1905:1; Newspapers.com
“Told in Departments,” Washington Post, 14 October 1908: 5: Newspapers.com
“North Sea Mine Force Hold Its First Fall Meeting,” Boston Globe, 14 October 1922: 9; Newspapers.com
Boston, Cambridge, Belmont, Waltham directories; various years; Ancestry.com
1910, 1920, 1940 US Federal Census; Ancestry.com
“Thirteen Speed Events At ‘Drome Tomorrow,” Buffalo Courier, 25 September 1915: 8; Newspapers.com
“Championship Events at the Velodrome Tonight,” Buffalo Courier, 26 Sept 1915: 79; Newspapers.com
“’Sax’ Williams Weds.,” Salt Lake Telegram, 16 July 1904:9; Newspapers.com
“Bicycle Racer in Trouble,” Salt Lake Herald, 17 March 1906: 3; Newspapers.com
“6028 Graduates in Boston Elementary Schools.” Boston Globe, 24 June 1909: 4; Newspapers.com
“Linotype machine,” Wikipedia.org, last updated 17 June 2020. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine>
World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration; Ancestry.com
Military, Compiled Service Records. World War I. Carded Records. Records of the Military Division of the Adjutant General’s Office, Massachusetts National Guard.
Education – training Ordnance operations, maintenance & repair schools, Ordnance Department, U.S. Army. United States, 1919. [Government Printing Office], Library of Congress; LOC.gov
“Brown in the Great War: A Changed Campus,” Brown University Library.
<https://library.brown.edu/create/browninthegreatwar/stories/a-changed-campus/#fn-47-17>
“Affairs of the Society World,” Buffalo Courier; 11 June 1920: 9; Newspapers.com
Leiser, William. “Dutch Rider Gains Lap, Ties Up Bike Race,” San Francisco Examiner, 15 March 1934: 21; Newspapers.com
“Massachusetts Marriages, 1841-1915,” citing Dorchester, Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States, State Archives, Boston; FamilySearch.org
“Boston Printers Form Credit Union,” Boston Globe, 6 June 1928; 25; Newspapers.com
“Gavel for Head of Typographical Union,” Boston Globe, 6 July 1931: 20; Newspapers.com
“Charles Acorn Dies in Quincy.” Boston Herald, 17 January 1958: C-26; Genealogybank.com
Deaths, Boston Globe, 17 June 1939: 3; Newspapers.com
Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration. Records of the Selective Service System, Record Group Number 147. National Archives and Records Administration; Ancestry.com
Burgess, Lyman. “Chess Notebook,” Boston Globe, 20 October 1957: 69; Newspapers.com
“Boylston Club Loses Valuable Member,” Chess Life, 20 February 1958:1; United States Chess Federation, new.uschess.org/chess-life-digital-archives
Charles R. Acorn, FindAGrave.com
Burgess, Lyman. “Chess Notebook,” Boston Globe, 14 May 1961: 43; Newspapers.com