Charlemagne Tower

Charlemagne Tower (April 18, 1809 – July 25, 1889) was an American lawyer and businessman active in acquiring land in the Schuylkill Valley in Pennsylvania and serving as an officer for coal and railroad companies. He organized and led a company of Union soldiers from Pottsville in a 3-month enlistment during the American Civil War when he was commissioned as captain.

After the war, with sell-off of lands by the Northern Pacific Railroad, he acquired large tracts in the upper Midwest and Northwest.

Charlemagne Tower was born on April 18, 1809, in Paris, Oneida County, New York, the eldest of the eight children of Reuben Tower, a New York State Legislator, and Deborah Taylor Pierce. Tower took his early schooling at the Oxford Academy, and then at the Clinton and Utica Academies. In 1824, at the age of 14, Tower taught school in Oneida County. The next year, he was made an assistant teacher at the Utica Academy. Tower entered Harvard in 1827, and graduated in 1830.

In the interim, Reuben Tower relocated his family to Waterville, New York, purchasing a property that still stands at the intersection of West Main St (NY 12) and Tower St. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 as the Tower Homestead and Masonic Temple.

Upon graduation, Tower became a legal apprentice of Harmanus Bleecker of Albany. He returned to Waterville in 1832 upon the death of his father, who had moved to St. Augustine, Florida, for health reasons. After settling his father's estate, Tower started working with the Graham Law Office of New York City. After being admitted to the bar in 1836, he returned to Waterville and started his own practice in a former small schoolhouse that is part of the Tower homestead.

In 1846, Tower relocated to Orwigsburg, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, in order to work with the legal issues regarding land claims to large coal and mineral deposits in that area. While there, he married Amelia Malvina Bartle on June 14, 1847. They had seven children: Charlemagne Jr. (Born April 17, 1848, in Philadelphia), Sara Louisa (Born August 6, 1849, in Orwigsburg), Deborah Taylor (Born February 4, 1851, in Orwigsburg), Emma (Born June 15, 1852, in Pottsville), Elizabeth (Born March 2, 1854, in Pottsville, and died a year and a half later), Henrietta (Born October 26, 1856, in Pottsville), and Grace Williams (Born May 15, 1859, in Pottsville).

Tower re-established his Pennsylvania practice in Pottsville in 1850 when it was made the Schuylkill County seat. The Towers made their home at the corner of South 4th and Mahantongo streets, one block from the Yuengling Brewery. He served as counsel in many land-ownership disputes and earned both a high reputation and great wealth. The most famous of these cases was the Munson–Williams affair, which would take nearly twenty-five years to complete.

Not long after Tower came to Pottsville, he began furiously purchasing and clearing liens to lands containing large anthracite deposits in and around Schuylkill County. This was part of an elaborate land-grab scheme devised by Tower and his partner, Alfred Munson of Utica, New York.