Bio: Travis, Charles Benjamin (History - 1836)

Contact: Janet Schwarze

Surnames: TRAVIS THOMPSON NILES

----Source: 1819 History of Clark and Jackson County, Wisconsin, by Franklyn, Curtiss-Wedge

Charles Benjamin Travis (1836)  

Charles Benjamin Travis, furniture dealer in Humbird, Clark County, was born in Chenango County, New York, February 18, 1836, the only child of Benjamin Travis. His father was born in Westchester County, that state, in a family of five sons and two daughters, all of whom were natives of that county. The grandfather Travis was also born in that county, in 1782, of a line of ancestry that cannot be further traced. He served in the war of 1812 and was wounded, but lived to an age of seventy-eight years, after having settled near Madison, this State. The grandmother's ancestry were English her maiden name was Mary Ann Thompson.

Benjamin Travis arrived in Wisconsin June 1, 1846, driving from Milwaukee to Madison with a hired team, there being no stage at the time. The family had come all the way from Chenango Forks, New York, by canal to Buffalo and thence to Milwaukee on a steam propeller, the lake voyage requiring eighteen days.

Mr. Charles B. Travis, our subject, spent a portion of his time from 1856 to 1874 in Jackson and Clark Counties, and since that date has been a permanent resident of the town of Mentor. In 1861 he offered himself for enlistment as a hundred-day man in the army, under the first call for volunteers, and was rejected after he was again rejected as a cavalryman, and as an infantryman in the Eighth Wisconsin, but in 1864 he was accepted and given the position of carpenter. He was sworn into service at St. Louis, Missouri, August 26, and was sent to Nashville, Tennessee.

After the war was over he returned to the North, and on October 4, 1866, married Josephine H. Niles, of Dane County, Wisconsin, who was born April 21, 1839, the eldest of eleven children, five daughters and six sons, natives of Tolland County, Connecticut seven of these are still living, but none in this State excepting Mrs. Travis. This lady taught school most of the time from the age of sixteen years to about seven years ago has taught seven years in Clark County, the rest of the time in Dane County and in Madison. She is now a member of the Board of Education. Mr. Travis is Justice of the Peace of the village and Town Clerk he has been Deputy Sheriff of Clark County, and was postmaster during Cleveland's administration. He takes an active interest in public affairs.

TRAVIS THOMPSON NILES