Who Are You, Charlie?
- Lawrence Lore
- Mar 18
- 2 min read
This photograph was donated to the us with only the name scribbled on the back (spelled incorrectly, I might add) and that he may have taught in the Sumner area. To properly file the photo we needed to know more about him. Google said the uniform was Civil War but Google was wrong. John King said it was Spanish American. We gave it to Marilyn W. with the instructions to learn more about the man. She began by doing a genealogical search and in the process learned that Ancestry was wrong as well, unless he was maried at 7 years of age. Finally she tracked him down!
This is what she found. "Charles Barekman was a man of distinction. He was born on January 11, 1875, in Sumner, Illinois. He attended college in Illinois and Indiana. He later taught for several years around Sumner but where is still unknown. He was a boarder at Gina Summers’ house. (This may be Louisa Sumner's house; there is still some confusion.)
After teaching for a few years, he headed West in 1897 and joined the US Marine Corps on August 27, 1898, at Mare Island, serving 3 years in the Philippines. He served in the Spanish-American War as a Corporal. After discharge from the service in 1903, Charles returned to the Collinsville, Illinois area where he married Ella Broughton on May 17, 1906. He and Ella had a son and a daughter.
In 1922, Charles and Ella moved back to Modesto, California, where Charles worked as a mail carrier until his retirement in 1944. He and Ella traveled extensively throughout the United States. In 1965, Charles was feted with a lavish 90th birthday party. He was celebrated as the oldest Spanish-American War veteran in Stanislaus County who was still ambulatory! Charles passed away on June 12, 1974, in Modesto and was buried in the Acacia Memorial Park in the city"
We don't do this with every photo (Well, John King does,) because the rest of us just don't have the time, but if this is something you might like to do, shoot us an email, lawrencelore@gmail.com, and we will send you a photo or two to help us identify.