According to Baltimore Hats: Past and Present by William T. Brigham, available online through the Project Gutenberg:
Charles Towson, who established himself in the retail hat business in 1836, on Eutaw street, near Lexington, entered into partnership in 1853 with Mr. Mead, the firm being Towson & Mead; they commenced hat manufacturing at No. 10 Water street, in the factory formerly occupied by Jas. Cox & Sons. The business was carried on for about one year, when it was abandoned and the firm was dissolved. Other parties made fruitless attempts to restore to Baltimore the prestige it once held in this business. To one person, however, is due the credit of maintaining a long, persistent and noble fight against odds and difficulties, and who, after all chances to restore vitality to an apparently pulseless enterprise seemed lost, retired from the contest, unscarred and full of honors, after a creditable business career of forty-six years, carried on in the same factory where fifty-two years before he entered service as a boy. This person was Mr. Wm. P. Cole, who engaged in the manufacturing business in 1827, as a member of the firm of Clap, Cole & Co.
According to Sutton’s book, Charles Towson was a Methodist who was involved in the establishment of the Howard Street Chapel, later renamed Strawbridge Methodist Church, and was also the president of the Journeymen Hatters’ Society.
Charles Towson died on the 23rd of October 1881 at 1:25 PM, at the age of roughly 73. His funeral was held at the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church South at 2 PM on Wednesday, the 26th of October 1881. He was listed as being amongst the “twelve oldest decedents” in the Sun’s weekly review of the “Health of the City.”
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Oct 31, 1881; pg. 6.
On October 27th of that year, his funeral was reported as having been “largely attended.” It also revealed that he was buried at Greenmount Cemetery.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Oct 27, 1881; pg. 4.
A legal notice was published in the Baltimore Sun the following week, giving claimants to his estate until May 15th 1882 to present their claim. The executors of his estate were Edward M. Kirkland and J. Sellman Shipley.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Nov 3, 1881; pg. 2.
Charles Towson owned a house on Eutaw Street, across from Lexington Market, where John Work Garrett, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was born in 1820. The house was described as a “two-story house with attic.”
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Sep 27, 1884; pg. 1.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Oct 2, 1858; pg. 2.
Charles was married at least twice, both times to women named Mary. His first marriage, on August 27, 1831 in Washington, DC [source] was to Mary Shaw, with whom he had at least five children [EDIT: According to the Obstetrical Casebooks of Dr. Ferdinand E. Chatard: An Alternative Genealogical Resource for Baltimore City, Maryland, 1829-1883, the last known child of Charles and Mary Shaw Towson was Mary's tenth child]. Mary S. Towson was born July 12th, 1813 and died September 30th, 1858, and was originally interred at Mt. Olivet Cemetery alongside her three infant children Charles Fletcher Towson, Philip Shaw Towson, and Virginia Ruth Gott Towson. Mary and her three children were reinterred at Greenmount Cemetery on January 21st, 1871, presumably to allow for Charles's second wife, Mary Wonderly, to be buried with both of her husbands. In addition to Charles, Philip and Virginia, Mary S. Towson was the mother of Charles's two daughters to survive to adulthood, Mary and Jane Estelle.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Oct 2, 1858; pg. 2.
Two years after Mary S. passed away, on Valentine's Day 1860, Charles was married to Mary A. Wonderly by Henry Slicer, three time Chaplain of the Senate. Mary Ann would also predecease Charles. Her death was reported in the Baltimore Sun as having occurred at her residence of 302 Madison Avenue. She died December 14th, 1879 and is buried in Greenmount Cemetery, alongside both Charles and her previous husband, John Wonderly. It seems likely that Mary Ann's maiden name was Cummins, as John Wonderly and Mary Ann Cummins were married October 29th 1833, which fits in with the timing.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Dec 15, 1879; pg. 2.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Dec 15, 1879; pg. 4.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Nov 16, 1853; pg. 2.
Apart from Charles and his wife, a short newspaper mention from the early 1850s made me very curious about the rest of his family.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Jul 7, 1852; pg. 4.
In the 1850 Census, Charles can be found living with his first wife Mary S. and their daughters Mary (4) and Jane (2 months), and a 10-year-old girl named Ann Stewart. By the 1860 Census, Mary S. has died and Charles has remarried Mary Wonderly. The family can now be found in Baltimore Ward 20. Mary is listed as being 45 years old, and there are two children: Mary, 15 years old, and Paul, ten years old. Two other women live in the household with them. 48 year old Julia Vogel and 15 year old Eliza Robinson, a black servant. The location of the younger daughter, alternatively known as Jane or Estelle, is unknown, but by the 1880s she resurfaces in a scandal which her husband Edward M. Kirkland and the son of a former judge from Cumberland, George A. Pearre. This story is long and rather wild, so I have decided that it deserves a post of it's own– read about Estelle Towson, woman of renown here!
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