Lewis Publishing Company, 1904

Transcribed from the original book by Kristin J. Vaughn © 2008

Charles Lee Fowler Page 554 Charles Lee Fowler, the present popular and efficient postmaster of Steele City, Nebraska, is one of the best known men of southeastern Nebraska, and with a reputation pretty well diffused over the entire west. He is an old-time editor, having begun in the most humble capacity years ago, and is acquainted with newspaper business from bottom to top. He has also the honor of being a veteran of the Civil war. For a number of years he was a pioneer actor and performer in the traveling shows and circuses which made the one phenomenal redletter day of the western communities before and after the introduction of railroads. All these varied experiences have been crowded into a life of sixty-three years, and indicate him to be a man of resourceful ability, versatile and popular with all classes of citizens, such as he has proved to be since coming to Jefferson county a little over a decade ago. Mr. Fowler was born in Fayette county, Pennsylvania, in Uniontown, September 30, 1840, of an old and well known eastern family. W. Emory Fowler, his father, was a cousin of the late well known writer and publisher, Professor O.S. Fowler, of New York city. The former was a tinsmith by trade, and followed that pursuit for a number of years in the east, and about 1850 became one of the early settlers of the state of Iowa, being in business in Des Moines for a time, and was also at New London, Henry county. He died at the age of seventy-eight, having been a Democrat in politics and liberal in religion. His wife was a Miss Van Every, of an old New York family, and her father was a relative of President Van Buren. She died at New London, Iowa, at the age of seventy, a member of the Christian church. They were parents of nine children. Charles Lee Fowler was educated in the town schools, but most of his wide acquaintance with history and literature was gained by his own self-imposed study and the exigencies of his profession. He was helped by a very retentive memory, and his versatile nature soon displayed itself. He began learning type-setting in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, being connected with the Genius of Liberty. He afterward went to Monmouth, Illinois, and then to Muscatine, Iowa. He was a young printer in a newspaper office there when the news of the rebellion first arrived. He and two or three others went out on the streets and made up the first drum corps, and enlisted recruits for the first Iowa volunteer regiment. He has the honor of being the first one enrolled from Iowa for service in the war, his enlistment dating in April, 1861, a few days after Sumter was fired upon. Captain Mason, of Muscatine, commanded the company, and Colonel Bates, of Dubuque, the regiment. They were sent south to the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad, and took part in many of the conflicts in Missouri during the early period of the war. He was with General Lyon at Booneville, also at Springfield, and at Wilson Creek, where Lyon was killed, and in the campaign against Price. He helped publish the first Union paper in the south, at Macon, Missouri, on June 15, 1861, and it sold for one dollar and a half a copy. The other editors were F.B. Wickel, E.G. Upham, S.T. Orr and Joseph Biles. Mr. Fowler was honorably discharged, and then returned to Iowa, where he engaged in more peaceful pursuits. He continued as a type-setter in Iowa for a time, and in 1865 went to Colorado, where he worked on the Rocky Mountain News. He had already displayed his genius as an actor and clown, was possessed of a good voice, and these qualifications soon led him into the most exciting part of his career. He was offered a good salary to become an actor in Denver, and from this beginning he traveled over most of the west and south, entertaining hundreds of delighted audiences. He was a good singer of comic songs, and popular in minstrels and variety shows. He received one hundred dollars a week as end man with Heatly and Chase, and he played with John Dillon and other well known actors. He was later with Fanny Hernandez, lessee of the Larimer Street theatre in Denver, and as general utility man received a good salary. He took a leading part in "All is not Gold that Glitters." The Fanny Hernandez troupe played at Fort Sedgewick, Colorado, in an adobe house, tickets at a dollar apiece. At the government post at Julesburg they put up cottonwood posts, shut in the sides with tarapaulin, and with the blue sky as their roof played to a large audience. This was the first company to make the rounds of government posts, and at Fort Kearney they remained a week, following the return of the soldiers from the Powder River expedition. They then came on to Columbus, Nebraska, then to Fremont, where they played in a storeroom, and at Omaha the only available hall was the court house. At Omaha Mr. Fowler took the management of the Dallows Concert Hall for the winter, and then went down the Missouri river with a party to St. Joseph and Kansas City. At Olathe, Kansas, he joined, in 1866, the Johnson and Van Vleck Circus Company, and was a comic singer and clown for them at a salary of twenty-five dollars a week. He was taken sick at Waverly, Iowa, in September, 1866, and in May, 1867, he joined the McGinley and Carrol Circus of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. On April 27, 1868, he joined the Cramer and Hampson Circus at Albia, Iowa, as a clown and singer, and was with them in the same capacity during the following year. On May 14, 1870, he joined O'Conner's Great Western Circus at Galesburg, Illinois, and he was now receiving fifty dollars a week, and refusing many good offers. In 1871 he joined the same circus at Hiawatha, Kansas, and during the winter was with the Empire City Circus, of Mobile, Alabama, all through the south. April 8, 1872, he joined, at Lincoln, Nebraska, the Saxby, Dunbar, Brooks and Ensign International Circus. He later joined Dr. Backenstoes' Cosmopolitan Circus at Keithsburg, Illinois, and went on steamboat with it up to the headwaters of the Mississippi and back to Memphis, Tennessee. In 1873 he was with W.W. Cole's Circus, of Quincy, Illinois, and in the following winter was in the south with Norton and Haight. In 1874 he was with the Great Eastern Circus, as also in 1875. In 1876 he was with G.G. Grady Circus Company, and in the following year ended his circus business. He then accepted a partnership in a printing office at Stewartsville, Missouri. He played in the first two-ring circus ever on the road, and was also with the first railroad show that ever traveled. He came to Steele City, Nebraska, in 1892, and was a publisher and editor for several years. He received his appointment as postmaster in 1898, and has given satisfactory service to the people of the town where he is so popular as a man. In June, 1870, Mr. Fowler was married in Fairfield, Jefferson county, Iowa, to Miss Lou Moore, who has been his faithful companion through all the up and downs of his career for thrity-three years. She is a lady of more than ordinary ability and culture, and is beloved at home and popular abroad. She was born, reared and educated in Iowa, a daughter of Dr. B.N. Moore, who was a successful physician of the old school, coming from Ohio to Iowa, where he died at the age of sixty. Dr. Moore was a Democrat, a liberal in religious belief. He married Rebecca Shellenbarger, of an old Dutch family, and they had four children, two sons and two daughters, the son George Moore having been a soldier and now residing at Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Mr. and Mrs. Fowler have one daughter, Florence Currie, who is the mother of two children. A son, Ralph D., died at the age of eight years. Mr. Fowler is a staunch Republican, and has been an active worker for the party all his life.