son of Charlotte A. Dunn & David E. Lindsay, married Dorothy Neeley

Charles Lindsay Drowns In Shoshone River While Bathing With Wife and Son

Dr. Charles Lindsay, age 36 and a son of Mrs. Charloette Lindsay of Byron, was drowned in the Shoshone river a quarter of a mile south of his mother's home Wednesday at about noon. The body was not recovered from the deep hole in which it became lodged until about three hours later.

Dr. Lindsay was dean of the junior college at Norfolk, Nebraska. He and wife, who was one of the daughters in the Joe Neely family of Lovell, had recently returned from a trip to California, where they spent most of the summer vacation and were to sojourn for a few days at Byron and then return to Mr. Lindsays's school work in Nebraska. They were fishing in the river south of Byron, accompanied by their 6-year-old son Charles Howard. Coming to a deep hole in some backwater the thought occured to them to take a swim, and they went for their bathing suits and arranged to go in the water. Both Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay had reputations as good swimmers. He went out in the deep pool with his little son on his shoulders. His wife noticed that he was in distress and swam to rescue the child, but did not succed in saving her husband, who disappeared in the cold water and was not again seen alive. A large crowd soon gathered about the scene of the tragedy to assist in recovering the body, which seemed lodged under the trunk of a submerged tree.

Undertaker Ray Easton was called from Powell to take charge of the body, which he brought back to town with him to prepare the remains for burial at Byron Friday afternoon at 2 o'clock.

Charles Lindsay was one of the sons in a well known Byron family. He is survived by a widowed mother and brothers and sisters, who are well known up and down the valley. He was born in Idaho, but came with his mother to Wyoming among the early pioneers of the Byron settlement. He grew to manhood in the Byron community, and later became a graduate of the university of Nebraska at Lincoln. He specialized in the study of history, and some two years ago was preparing a historial sketch of the Big Horn basin as a thesis for a master's degree, at the time he and wife visiting Powell and other points for information.
(taken from the Powell Tribune, 13 Aug 1931, page 1)

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Charles Lindsay was born in Bennington, Idaho, February 5, 1895. His parents, David and Charlotte Dunn Lindsay, were pioneer Mormon settlers in the Bear Lake Community of sourthern Idaho. In May, 1800, they migrated with a party of colonists to the Big Horn Basin, in Wyoming, and settled in the newly established village of Byron, where they homesteaded land and aided in the building of the Sidon canal. Charles attended the first school in Byron, and in 1911 completed the elementary grades. He then went to the Big Horn Academy, at Cowley, Wyoming, the only secondary school in the region. He was graduated from this institution in 1914, and spent the next year at the Weber Academy and Normal School of Ogden, Utah. Then followed two years of teaching, one as sixth grade teacher in Byron, and the next as principal of the school at Penrose, a near-by village.

In the fall of 1917 he went to Salt Lake City to enter the University of Utah. Before going, however, he volunteered for enlistment in the United States army. He was placed on the deferred list and received his call the next June. He was sent to Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky, where he remained until his discharge in March, 1919. During his service he was a member of the Camp Zachary Taylor band, and was first sergeant in Company "B," 442 Reserve Battalion.

He returned home after his release from the army, and at once entered the public school system at Lovell, Wyoming, as principal of the junior high school, a position which he relinquished in 1920 to become grade school principal and director of athletics at Burke, Idaho. He was married January 31, 1920, to Dorothy Neely, of Lovell, Wyoming.

The summer of 1920 he spent as a United States forest ranger in the Big Horn Mountain forest reserve, and the summer of 1921 as director of athletics in a boy scout camp on Lake Coeur d'Alene, in northern Idaho. He was superintendent of schools at Clarkia, Idaho, for the year 1921-22.

In June, 1922, he came to Lincoln to enter the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Nebraska. From the outset he was interested in history, and with that subject as his major field of interest, he earned an A.B. degree in 1924 and an A.M. in 1925. His marked ability was quickly recognized by his instructors and during the years 1923-25 he held an assistantship in the history department.

In 1925 he took a position as superintendent of schools at Gary, South Dakota, where he remained for two years in order to make further graduate work in history financially possible. He was awarded a teaching fellowship in the history department of the University of Minnesota for the year 1927-28, and there continued his work toward a doctor's degree. He spent the summer of 1928 in Wyoming and Montana gathering material for the history of the Big Horn Basin which now appears.

While at the University of Minnesota he received an appointment as professor of American history at the State Teachers' College, Peru, Nebraska. He taught at Peru during the winter and summer terms of 1928-9, and returned to the University of Nebraska on leave of absence in the fall of 1929, to complete the work for a Ph..D. degree. The degree was granted in June 1930. During this year and the following summer he held a temporary appointment as assistant instructor in American History at the University of Nebraska. In the fall of 1930 he resigned his position at the Peru Teachers' College to accept the deanship fo the Junior College at Norfolk, Nebraska.

During the summer of 1931 he went with his wife and son on an extensive western tour in which he hoped to combine both business and pleasure. He visited Salt Lake City and gathered some materials from the archives of the Mormon Church; also, he found and examined the local records of various Mormon colonies. On his way back to his home in Norfolk, Nebraska, where he was Dean of the Junior College he stopped for a week's visit with his mother at Byron, Wyoming. It was here on August 11, that he met his death while swimming in the Shoshone river, only a few rods from the house where he had passed his childhood. The accident occurred when, after crossing the river twice alone, he attempted to swim across a third time with his six year old son on his back. The exertion of carrying the extra weight apparently exhausted him, for he sank without a struggle and without warning. His wife succeeded in rescuing the child but was unable to reach her husband. He was buried in the family plot at Byron, beside his father, who had perished in a snowslide in the Kerwin Mountains of Wyoming a number of years before.

Mr. Lindsay's death deprives the historical profession of a promising young scholar. As an undergraduate or as a graduate student he was chosen to Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Delta Kappa and other honorary societies. He had a fine flair for research and wrote well. Aready he had published articles in the Prairie Schooner, American Speech, the Junior College Journal, and the Annals of Wyoming, and the Nebraska History Magazine. For his literary accomplishments he had won local recognition by election to memebership in the Nebraska Writers' Guild, and if he had lived it seems highly probable that he would soon have achieved a much wider reputation. In all his work he was ably assisted by his wife, who is herself a competent scholar and teacher, and who will, it may be hoped, continue some of the work he began.