This entry is part 3 of 4 about the family of Moses & Irena Niles, our 1st cousins 5x removed. To best appreciate the family’s story, start by reading the entry on George H. Niles (April 23, 2024), then William Niles (April 24), and then this one.
Sometime in 1863, Moses & Irena Niles’s third son, Charles William Niles, decided he would also join the fight to save the Union. Eight days after he turned 18, on December 16, 1863, he volunteered for three years’ service as a private in the same regiment as his brother William, the 38th Iowa Infantry. At enlistment, Charles was 5 feet 3 inches tall, with light complexion, blue eyes, and light hair, and was a farmer. He received a $60 bounty/bonus with a $5 premium.
But Charles wasn’t alone—his father Moses signed up on the
same day, for the same regiment. Charles and Moses reported for duty at Camp Franklin in
Dubuque, and on January 14, 1864; they were mustered in and sent downriver to the Camp McClellan Recruitment Depot
in Davenport, Iowa. Both were still training there, waiting to be
shipped out to their regiment, when William Niles died in Natchez on his way
home.
Sometime in February, Charles Niles and his father boarded a river steamer bound for New Orleans. By the time they reached Mississippi, Charles had contracted measles, and was taken ashore to a regimental hospital in Vicksburg. Moses Niles went on alone, and by the end of the month had joined the 38th Iowa Infantry in Brownsville, Texas. (More on him in the next entry.)
By early March, Charles Niles recovered enough to continue on to Brownsville, where he joined his regiment on March 20, 1864. Both he and his father were assigned to Company I. However, Charles was not well enough for active duty, and didn’t seem to be getting any better. He was eventually sent back to New Orleans where, on June 16, 1864, an examining surgeon named Robert McNutt reported that Niles was unfit for duty “because of diminutive size—no physical ability—very emaciated—chest contracted—consumptive—chronic diarrhea—very anemic—Should never have been passed by the surgeon or accepted as a recruit—improperly enlisted—unfit for V[eteran] R[eserve] C[orps]—Disability ¾.”
Charles William Niles was discharged for disability and sent back up the river, and on July 5 was mustered out at Cairo, Illinois, having never fought. He returned to the Niles family farm in Lime Springs and applied for an Invalid Pension on October 19, 1864. It was approved.
Moses Niles survived the war and was back in Iowa by early fall 1865. Before 1870, the entire Niles clan moved to Stanchfield Township, Isanti County, Minnesota, just north of the Twin Cities. Here Charles met and married Mary Janelle “Nettie” Gilman in January 1870. He was 24 and she was 16.
While newlyweds Charles & Nettie Niles are shown living with his parents in the 1870 Census, by the 1880 Census they had moved out . . . to the next farm down the road . . . and had a family of their own. A big family—ten children before 1883, and they came in waves: Samuel (1871); Lucy (1873); fraternal twins Emma and Emmet (1875); fraternal triplets! Frances, Franklin, and George (1877); Myrtle (1880); and fraternal twins Cora and Charles Jr. (1883).
Charles and Nettie divorced in 1886 or 1887, and both remarried. Charles wed 41-year-old Lovica Armstrong in 1891 (he was then 45); she died a year later. Nettie (39) married 56-year-old Angus McAdam in 1892, and they had a daughter named Marie in 1894.
Sometime between 1900 and 1910, Charles headed west to Washington, as did many of his children and their families. The 1910 Census shows Charles living with his daughter Myrtle’s family in Bremerton. In the 1920 Census, he was living with his son Charles Jr.’s family in nearby Kitstap Lake.
On June 1, 1926, Charles William Niles died at the age of 80 and was buried in the Ivy Green Cemetery in Bremerton.
Finally, two interesting notes about his youngest two children. First, Cora Belle Niles married a man with an interesting name: Tom Thumb Sevey. (General Tom Thumb, also a relative of ours, was a major celebrity at the time.) And second, Cora’s fraternal twin Charles William Niles Jr. served in World War I at the age of 33. (It’s rare to see Civil War veterans with sons who become WWI veterans.) Charles Jr. lived until 1978, when he died in San Diego at age 94.
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