If you do genealogy and believe sometimes the people you research are leading you, this storied man has been my ultimate tease. Entrepreneur, inventor, bon vivant and salesman par excellence, Charles Davies was the first husband of my grandpa's sister, Amy I Romberger. With her, he was the father of a son bearing his same name, who died 14 hours after birth. Sometime thereafter, a divorce ensued and they both went their separate ways. Amy remarried and had a daughter while Charles went out in the world to pursue many relationships and to run his own successful company.
Getting basics on his life proved hard. Before getting his gravesite pictures, his birth and death dates were not known, just that he was born about 1888-1890 and died in 1944. His interment was December 11, 1944. The pictures put his birth and death date uncertainties to rest... except that in July 2012, I found WWI and WWII draft cards for Charles and WWI says he was born 1888 and WWII says 1890. And they say he was born in Nanticoke, while on travel documents for going overseas, he claims being born in "Glen Lyon". More on this latter wonderful town may be found here. Funnily, that WWII draft card, in the section asking for identifying disfigurements notes only "index finger, left hand, cut off at first joint". If this was done by the registrar's observation, that's one thing, but if answered by him, it's interesting he omitted his missing leg.
It's known that Charles' father was in the theater, specifically in light opera, and though Charles was a showman of sorts himself, there's no evidence he was in the performing arts. The family's original surname was Harris, changed to Davies as a stage name. Charles' grandfather's second marriage was to a woman whose maiden name was Davies, and who may have been part of a family that supported him in his operatic career as patrons. Speculation aside, the Harris surname was dropped in favor of Davies, and Harris became a middle name.
Going by the censuses, Charles' father was born in Wales and his mother born in Pennsylvania, like himself. This seems a bit odd though - Charles' father came to the US in 1890, so Charles' father would have had to work awfully fast to have married and had a child the same year. The timetable might be trimmed a bit because it is possible his parents never married.
The family stories on Charles say he was a dynamic salesman who did very well in promoting our family business, Romberger Cast Stone. Our family has a staff photo of people who worked there and for the longest time, I wondered which person was Charles. I finally settled on one gent feeling reasonably confident. I felt the reasons it was likely to be him were several-fold. One is his sheer position in the photo which fits because essentially he was working for his father in law, my great grandpa. The suspected Charles is sitting on the ground, center, just to the right of the principals of the company, my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my grandpa's sister, the company stenographer, May - close to them yet humbly a bit below them. Another reason is that cast stone is dirty work, but he's wearing a crisp shirt and tie of a salesman, suggesting he's one of the few who did not work in production. Further, doing a closeup of this photo, one sees a lump below his knee, where our Charles lost part of his leg in a mining accident as a youngster, and the left knee may show where his prosthesis attached. Lastly, zooming in on his hands, on his left hand we see his only piece of jewelry, what appears to be a wedding ring. This photo was believed to have been taken 1918 to 1920, and indeed, he married Amy in 1920.
This all fit, yet it was not until May of 2011 that I connected with someone who had pictures of Charles and confirmed my guess correct.
Charles' marriage with my great aunt Amy failed sometime after they lost their newborn son. My Aunt Barbara (actually my dad's cousin), the daughter of Amy by her second marriage said that she had heard Charles got into the artificial limb business, and indeed, researching this, I had found this to be true. He had several patents, among which I found the following:
Solid ankle foot base, US patent 1884588
Method of making artificial limbs, US patent 1884589
Mold, US patent 1884590
Composition socket for artificial legs, US patent 1907511
Artificial limb, US patent 2152401
Ankle joint structure for artificial limbs, US patent 2152402
Charles also earned a mention in Time Magazine for his showmanship at an artificial limb trade show:
(Excerpt from Time, Oct. 18, 1937) - "More colorful than either old President Spievak (of the Association of Limb Manufacturers of America) or new President Aunger is Philadelphia Limb Manufacturer Charles Harris Davies who has been minus part of his left leg since a coal mine accident when he was a boy, now does a thriving trade in aluminum limbs, has branches as far away as Argentina. He irks his confreres by being flamboyant, stealing publicity from the convention. This year, to circumvent him, the convention appointed a publicity committee. But, while the more serious minded of the delegates sat down to ponder such questions as whether they were professionals or business men, and how to improve their rather strained relations with surgeons, Mr. Davies again stole the show by introducing a 14-year-old Airedale named Paul who has an aluminum rear leg which allows him to run, jump, sit up."
This article made me think... you have a young man who, despite his loss, hustles around as a salesman, and later who runs a successful limb business of his own. Clearly, he did not allow this to block his way.
In 1936, Chemical Week and Chemical Industries reported that limbs "made from Pyralin by CH Davies Co., Philadelphia, are on view at du Pont's place on the Boardwalk, Atlantic City..." [NOTE: Pyralin is a lightweight artificial ivory that can be produced in a variety of colors.]
Light Metals, in 1944 reported "By a novel hydraulic press the CH Davies Co. of Philadelphia can produce perfect shin sections in 5 minutes, with no rivets, seams or welds..."
In 1947, Federal Trade Commission decisions included information citing "CH Davies Co., Inc., a New Jersey corporation, with its place of business at Newark, NJ, and William F. Francis" and "CH Davies Co., Inc., and William F. Francis and Frederick Francis, in connection with the sale and distribution..." It is a limited view book online so this supplies us only with the names of potential colleagues.
In 1955, "Mr. and Mrs. R. L. Rohe of the C. H. Davies Co., Philadelphia, Pa" on January 10 and 11 attended "The Prosthetic Devices Study of New York University, in cooperation with the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of the United States Navy, conducted a two-day demonstration and discussion of the Navy below-knee prosthesis at the Prosthetic Testing and Development Laboratory, Veterans Administration, New York Regional Office. A complete fitting of this leg, which consists of a soft socket, plastic shank, and Navy functional ankle was performed before a group of prosthetists and physicians from the New York Metropolitan Area. During and after the fitting, discussions were conducted on Navy techniques in below-knee prosthetics."
Charles or his company show up in industrial directories and rehabilitation journals at least until 1962 at 1136 W. Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, as a manufacturer of artificial limbs. His business may in fact have been known at one time as Girard Artificial Limb Company as well as C. H. Davies Company.
Charles' first son is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The records kept by the cemetery, or at least the staff's inability to translate them, means I have walked the cemetery may times and not found the spot, marked or not. His child is supposed to be buried with a Charles H. David, which seems too close in name to be coincidental, but it must be their error. One employee told me the records have two plot locations for the child (one with his great grandma, Mary Elizabeth Kepler) and the other on the far side from our main plot. Another employee told me only about this latter one. Either way I cannot find Charles' first son's resting place, close though I surely am.
For some time, because of the info suggesting the child was buried with Charles H David, I thought this child was buried with his father, but in May of 2011 Charles' true resting place in Florida was confirmed so we know that is not true.
People researching Charles' line have usually not been able to find his place of death or rest correctly because there is another man of his name who died in Florida. I have checked that man out thoroughly and only the name matches; his date of birth was December 29, 1894 and I found the funeral home who had the names of his parents- not a match. In addition, that man was born in Gainesville, Florida.
Many stories about this gent abound. One of the best is that when he first went to Argentina on business, he was refused entry to the country which at that time had strict laws against disabled people entering, owing to then-current belief that they were a drain on society. In the company of a lady said to be a duchess, Charles swept her up and proceeded to dance around the ship's deck to show clearly he was not disabled. His demonstration was successful, and he later made contact with the ruling government and established a manufacturing plant in the country.
During his lifetime, Charles fathered three known children, though he was not consistently present for them all. His infant son with Amy Romberger seems to have been his first. With a lady named Carrie from northeastern Pennsylvania, Charles had his daughter Virginia. With a lady of German descent also from the coal regions he had his son Charles. At this time no documentation has been found to establish if these relationships were formal marriages. A 191 license was procured in Philadelphia for a Charles Davies and Anna I Romberger which seems likely but unproven to be our man.
Charles was a longtime Philadelphian at his passing; he'd been in Miami just three months when he died. His cause of death is not known for certain. Family has pointed out that just prior to his passing he had been through a long cold winter in New York. Others understand that Charles may have had black lung from his coal work in his youth, and that it finally caught up to him.
Big sincere thanks to Paul E. Twist who kindly went to the cemetery and got these wonderful pictures of Charles' resting place, and who also found a death notice for Charles from the Miami Herald.
Getting basics on his life proved hard. Before getting his gravesite pictures, his birth and death dates were not known, just that he was born about 1888-1890 and died in 1944. His interment was December 11, 1944. The pictures put his birth and death date uncertainties to rest... except that in July 2012, I found WWI and WWII draft cards for Charles and WWI says he was born 1888 and WWII says 1890. And they say he was born in Nanticoke, while on travel documents for going overseas, he claims being born in "Glen Lyon". More on this latter wonderful town may be found here. Funnily, that WWII draft card, in the section asking for identifying disfigurements notes only "index finger, left hand, cut off at first joint". If this was done by the registrar's observation, that's one thing, but if answered by him, it's interesting he omitted his missing leg.
It's known that Charles' father was in the theater, specifically in light opera, and though Charles was a showman of sorts himself, there's no evidence he was in the performing arts. The family's original surname was Harris, changed to Davies as a stage name. Charles' grandfather's second marriage was to a woman whose maiden name was Davies, and who may have been part of a family that supported him in his operatic career as patrons. Speculation aside, the Harris surname was dropped in favor of Davies, and Harris became a middle name.
Going by the censuses, Charles' father was born in Wales and his mother born in Pennsylvania, like himself. This seems a bit odd though - Charles' father came to the US in 1890, so Charles' father would have had to work awfully fast to have married and had a child the same year. The timetable might be trimmed a bit because it is possible his parents never married.
The family stories on Charles say he was a dynamic salesman who did very well in promoting our family business, Romberger Cast Stone. Our family has a staff photo of people who worked there and for the longest time, I wondered which person was Charles. I finally settled on one gent feeling reasonably confident. I felt the reasons it was likely to be him were several-fold. One is his sheer position in the photo which fits because essentially he was working for his father in law, my great grandpa. The suspected Charles is sitting on the ground, center, just to the right of the principals of the company, my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my grandpa's sister, the company stenographer, May - close to them yet humbly a bit below them. Another reason is that cast stone is dirty work, but he's wearing a crisp shirt and tie of a salesman, suggesting he's one of the few who did not work in production. Further, doing a closeup of this photo, one sees a lump below his knee, where our Charles lost part of his leg in a mining accident as a youngster, and the left knee may show where his prosthesis attached. Lastly, zooming in on his hands, on his left hand we see his only piece of jewelry, what appears to be a wedding ring. This photo was believed to have been taken 1918 to 1920, and indeed, he married Amy in 1920.
This all fit, yet it was not until May of 2011 that I connected with someone who had pictures of Charles and confirmed my guess correct.
Charles' marriage with my great aunt Amy failed sometime after they lost their newborn son. My Aunt Barbara (actually my dad's cousin), the daughter of Amy by her second marriage said that she had heard Charles got into the artificial limb business, and indeed, researching this, I had found this to be true. He had several patents, among which I found the following:
Solid ankle foot base, US patent 1884588
Method of making artificial limbs, US patent 1884589
Mold, US patent 1884590
Composition socket for artificial legs, US patent 1907511
Artificial limb, US patent 2152401
Ankle joint structure for artificial limbs, US patent 2152402
Charles also earned a mention in Time Magazine for his showmanship at an artificial limb trade show:
(Excerpt from Time, Oct. 18, 1937) - "More colorful than either old President Spievak (of the Association of Limb Manufacturers of America) or new President Aunger is Philadelphia Limb Manufacturer Charles Harris Davies who has been minus part of his left leg since a coal mine accident when he was a boy, now does a thriving trade in aluminum limbs, has branches as far away as Argentina. He irks his confreres by being flamboyant, stealing publicity from the convention. This year, to circumvent him, the convention appointed a publicity committee. But, while the more serious minded of the delegates sat down to ponder such questions as whether they were professionals or business men, and how to improve their rather strained relations with surgeons, Mr. Davies again stole the show by introducing a 14-year-old Airedale named Paul who has an aluminum rear leg which allows him to run, jump, sit up."
This article made me think... you have a young man who, despite his loss, hustles around as a salesman, and later who runs a successful limb business of his own. Clearly, he did not allow this to block his way.
In 1936, Chemical Week and Chemical Industries reported that limbs "made from Pyralin by CH Davies Co., Philadelphia, are on view at du Pont's place on the Boardwalk, Atlantic City..." [NOTE: Pyralin is a lightweight artificial ivory that can be produced in a variety of colors.]
Light Metals, in 1944 reported "By a novel hydraulic press the CH Davies Co. of Philadelphia can produce perfect shin sections in 5 minutes, with no rivets, seams or welds..."
In 1947, Federal Trade Commission decisions included information citing "CH Davies Co., Inc., a New Jersey corporation, with its place of business at Newark, NJ, and William F. Francis" and "CH Davies Co., Inc., and William F. Francis and Frederick Francis, in connection with the sale and distribution..." It is a limited view book online so this supplies us only with the names of potential colleagues.
In 1955, "Mr. and Mrs. R. L. Rohe of the C. H. Davies Co., Philadelphia, Pa" on January 10 and 11 attended "The Prosthetic Devices Study of New York University, in cooperation with the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of the United States Navy, conducted a two-day demonstration and discussion of the Navy below-knee prosthesis at the Prosthetic Testing and Development Laboratory, Veterans Administration, New York Regional Office. A complete fitting of this leg, which consists of a soft socket, plastic shank, and Navy functional ankle was performed before a group of prosthetists and physicians from the New York Metropolitan Area. During and after the fitting, discussions were conducted on Navy techniques in below-knee prosthetics."
Charles or his company show up in industrial directories and rehabilitation journals at least until 1962 at 1136 W. Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, as a manufacturer of artificial limbs. His business may in fact have been known at one time as Girard Artificial Limb Company as well as C. H. Davies Company.
Charles' first son is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The records kept by the cemetery, or at least the staff's inability to translate them, means I have walked the cemetery may times and not found the spot, marked or not. His child is supposed to be buried with a Charles H. David, which seems too close in name to be coincidental, but it must be their error. One employee told me the records have two plot locations for the child (one with his great grandma, Mary Elizabeth Kepler) and the other on the far side from our main plot. Another employee told me only about this latter one. Either way I cannot find Charles' first son's resting place, close though I surely am.
For some time, because of the info suggesting the child was buried with Charles H David, I thought this child was buried with his father, but in May of 2011 Charles' true resting place in Florida was confirmed so we know that is not true.
People researching Charles' line have usually not been able to find his place of death or rest correctly because there is another man of his name who died in Florida. I have checked that man out thoroughly and only the name matches; his date of birth was December 29, 1894 and I found the funeral home who had the names of his parents- not a match. In addition, that man was born in Gainesville, Florida.
Many stories about this gent abound. One of the best is that when he first went to Argentina on business, he was refused entry to the country which at that time had strict laws against disabled people entering, owing to then-current belief that they were a drain on society. In the company of a lady said to be a duchess, Charles swept her up and proceeded to dance around the ship's deck to show clearly he was not disabled. His demonstration was successful, and he later made contact with the ruling government and established a manufacturing plant in the country.
During his lifetime, Charles fathered three known children, though he was not consistently present for them all. His infant son with Amy Romberger seems to have been his first. With a lady named Carrie from northeastern Pennsylvania, Charles had his daughter Virginia. With a lady of German descent also from the coal regions he had his son Charles. At this time no documentation has been found to establish if these relationships were formal marriages. A 191 license was procured in Philadelphia for a Charles Davies and Anna I Romberger which seems likely but unproven to be our man.
Charles was a longtime Philadelphian at his passing; he'd been in Miami just three months when he died. His cause of death is not known for certain. Family has pointed out that just prior to his passing he had been through a long cold winter in New York. Others understand that Charles may have had black lung from his coal work in his youth, and that it finally caught up to him.
Big sincere thanks to Paul E. Twist who kindly went to the cemetery and got these wonderful pictures of Charles' resting place, and who also found a death notice for Charles from the Miami Herald.
If you do genealogy and believe sometimes the people you research are leading you, this storied man has been my ultimate tease. Entrepreneur, inventor, bon vivant and salesman par excellence, Charles Davies was the first husband of my grandpa's sister, Amy I Romberger. With her, he was the father of a son bearing his same name, who died 14 hours after birth. Sometime thereafter, a divorce ensued and they both went their separate ways. Amy remarried and had a daughter while Charles went out in the world to pursue many relationships and to run his own successful company.
Getting basics on his life proved hard. Before getting his gravesite pictures, his birth and death dates were not known, just that he was born about 1888-1890 and died in 1944. His interment was December 11, 1944. The pictures put his birth and death date uncertainties to rest... except that in July 2012, I found WWI and WWII draft cards for Charles and WWI says he was born 1888 and WWII says 1890. And they say he was born in Nanticoke, while on travel documents for going overseas, he claims being born in "Glen Lyon". More on this latter wonderful town may be found here. Funnily, that WWII draft card, in the section asking for identifying disfigurements notes only "index finger, left hand, cut off at first joint". If this was done by the registrar's observation, that's one thing, but if answered by him, it's interesting he omitted his missing leg.
It's known that Charles' father was in the theater, specifically in light opera, and though Charles was a showman of sorts himself, there's no evidence he was in the performing arts. The family's original surname was Harris, changed to Davies as a stage name. Charles' grandfather's second marriage was to a woman whose maiden name was Davies, and who may have been part of a family that supported him in his operatic career as patrons. Speculation aside, the Harris surname was dropped in favor of Davies, and Harris became a middle name.
Going by the censuses, Charles' father was born in Wales and his mother born in Pennsylvania, like himself. This seems a bit odd though - Charles' father came to the US in 1890, so Charles' father would have had to work awfully fast to have married and had a child the same year. The timetable might be trimmed a bit because it is possible his parents never married.
The family stories on Charles say he was a dynamic salesman who did very well in promoting our family business, Romberger Cast Stone. Our family has a staff photo of people who worked there and for the longest time, I wondered which person was Charles. I finally settled on one gent feeling reasonably confident. I felt the reasons it was likely to be him were several-fold. One is his sheer position in the photo which fits because essentially he was working for his father in law, my great grandpa. The suspected Charles is sitting on the ground, center, just to the right of the principals of the company, my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my grandpa's sister, the company stenographer, May - close to them yet humbly a bit below them. Another reason is that cast stone is dirty work, but he's wearing a crisp shirt and tie of a salesman, suggesting he's one of the few who did not work in production. Further, doing a closeup of this photo, one sees a lump below his knee, where our Charles lost part of his leg in a mining accident as a youngster, and the left knee may show where his prosthesis attached. Lastly, zooming in on his hands, on his left hand we see his only piece of jewelry, what appears to be a wedding ring. This photo was believed to have been taken 1918 to 1920, and indeed, he married Amy in 1920.
This all fit, yet it was not until May of 2011 that I connected with someone who had pictures of Charles and confirmed my guess correct.
Charles' marriage with my great aunt Amy failed sometime after they lost their newborn son. My Aunt Barbara (actually my dad's cousin), the daughter of Amy by her second marriage said that she had heard Charles got into the artificial limb business, and indeed, researching this, I had found this to be true. He had several patents, among which I found the following:
Solid ankle foot base, US patent 1884588
Method of making artificial limbs, US patent 1884589
Mold, US patent 1884590
Composition socket for artificial legs, US patent 1907511
Artificial limb, US patent 2152401
Ankle joint structure for artificial limbs, US patent 2152402
Charles also earned a mention in Time Magazine for his showmanship at an artificial limb trade show:
(Excerpt from Time, Oct. 18, 1937) - "More colorful than either old President Spievak (of the Association of Limb Manufacturers of America) or new President Aunger is Philadelphia Limb Manufacturer Charles Harris Davies who has been minus part of his left leg since a coal mine accident when he was a boy, now does a thriving trade in aluminum limbs, has branches as far away as Argentina. He irks his confreres by being flamboyant, stealing publicity from the convention. This year, to circumvent him, the convention appointed a publicity committee. But, while the more serious minded of the delegates sat down to ponder such questions as whether they were professionals or business men, and how to improve their rather strained relations with surgeons, Mr. Davies again stole the show by introducing a 14-year-old Airedale named Paul who has an aluminum rear leg which allows him to run, jump, sit up."
This article made me think... you have a young man who, despite his loss, hustles around as a salesman, and later who runs a successful limb business of his own. Clearly, he did not allow this to block his way.
In 1936, Chemical Week and Chemical Industries reported that limbs "made from Pyralin by CH Davies Co., Philadelphia, are on view at du Pont's place on the Boardwalk, Atlantic City..." [NOTE: Pyralin is a lightweight artificial ivory that can be produced in a variety of colors.]
Light Metals, in 1944 reported "By a novel hydraulic press the CH Davies Co. of Philadelphia can produce perfect shin sections in 5 minutes, with no rivets, seams or welds..."
In 1947, Federal Trade Commission decisions included information citing "CH Davies Co., Inc., a New Jersey corporation, with its place of business at Newark, NJ, and William F. Francis" and "CH Davies Co., Inc., and William F. Francis and Frederick Francis, in connection with the sale and distribution..." It is a limited view book online so this supplies us only with the names of potential colleagues.
In 1955, "Mr. and Mrs. R. L. Rohe of the C. H. Davies Co., Philadelphia, Pa" on January 10 and 11 attended "The Prosthetic Devices Study of New York University, in cooperation with the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of the United States Navy, conducted a two-day demonstration and discussion of the Navy below-knee prosthesis at the Prosthetic Testing and Development Laboratory, Veterans Administration, New York Regional Office. A complete fitting of this leg, which consists of a soft socket, plastic shank, and Navy functional ankle was performed before a group of prosthetists and physicians from the New York Metropolitan Area. During and after the fitting, discussions were conducted on Navy techniques in below-knee prosthetics."
Charles or his company show up in industrial directories and rehabilitation journals at least until 1962 at 1136 W. Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, as a manufacturer of artificial limbs. His business may in fact have been known at one time as Girard Artificial Limb Company as well as C. H. Davies Company.
Charles' first son is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The records kept by the cemetery, or at least the staff's inability to translate them, means I have walked the cemetery may times and not found the spot, marked or not. His child is supposed to be buried with a Charles H. David, which seems too close in name to be coincidental, but it must be their error. One employee told me the records have two plot locations for the child (one with his great grandma, Mary Elizabeth Kepler) and the other on the far side from our main plot. Another employee told me only about this latter one. Either way I cannot find Charles' first son's resting place, close though I surely am.
For some time, because of the info suggesting the child was buried with Charles H David, I thought this child was buried with his father, but in May of 2011 Charles' true resting place in Florida was confirmed so we know that is not true.
People researching Charles' line have usually not been able to find his place of death or rest correctly because there is another man of his name who died in Florida. I have checked that man out thoroughly and only the name matches; his date of birth was December 29, 1894 and I found the funeral home who had the names of his parents- not a match. In addition, that man was born in Gainesville, Florida.
Many stories about this gent abound. One of the best is that when he first went to Argentina on business, he was refused entry to the country which at that time had strict laws against disabled people entering, owing to then-current belief that they were a drain on society. In the company of a lady said to be a duchess, Charles swept her up and proceeded to dance around the ship's deck to show clearly he was not disabled. His demonstration was successful, and he later made contact with the ruling government and established a manufacturing plant in the country.
During his lifetime, Charles fathered three known children, though he was not consistently present for them all. His infant son with Amy Romberger seems to have been his first. With a lady named Carrie from northeastern Pennsylvania, Charles had his daughter Virginia. With a lady of German descent also from the coal regions he had his son Charles. At this time no documentation has been found to establish if these relationships were formal marriages. A 191 license was procured in Philadelphia for a Charles Davies and Anna I Romberger which seems likely but unproven to be our man.
Charles was a longtime Philadelphian at his passing; he'd been in Miami just three months when he died. His cause of death is not known for certain. Family has pointed out that just prior to his passing he had been through a long cold winter in New York. Others understand that Charles may have had black lung from his coal work in his youth, and that it finally caught up to him.
Big sincere thanks to Paul E. Twist who kindly went to the cemetery and got these wonderful pictures of Charles' resting place, and who also found a death notice for Charles from the Miami Herald.
Getting basics on his life proved hard. Before getting his gravesite pictures, his birth and death dates were not known, just that he was born about 1888-1890 and died in 1944. His interment was December 11, 1944. The pictures put his birth and death date uncertainties to rest... except that in July 2012, I found WWI and WWII draft cards for Charles and WWI says he was born 1888 and WWII says 1890. And they say he was born in Nanticoke, while on travel documents for going overseas, he claims being born in "Glen Lyon". More on this latter wonderful town may be found here. Funnily, that WWII draft card, in the section asking for identifying disfigurements notes only "index finger, left hand, cut off at first joint". If this was done by the registrar's observation, that's one thing, but if answered by him, it's interesting he omitted his missing leg.
It's known that Charles' father was in the theater, specifically in light opera, and though Charles was a showman of sorts himself, there's no evidence he was in the performing arts. The family's original surname was Harris, changed to Davies as a stage name. Charles' grandfather's second marriage was to a woman whose maiden name was Davies, and who may have been part of a family that supported him in his operatic career as patrons. Speculation aside, the Harris surname was dropped in favor of Davies, and Harris became a middle name.
Going by the censuses, Charles' father was born in Wales and his mother born in Pennsylvania, like himself. This seems a bit odd though - Charles' father came to the US in 1890, so Charles' father would have had to work awfully fast to have married and had a child the same year. The timetable might be trimmed a bit because it is possible his parents never married.
The family stories on Charles say he was a dynamic salesman who did very well in promoting our family business, Romberger Cast Stone. Our family has a staff photo of people who worked there and for the longest time, I wondered which person was Charles. I finally settled on one gent feeling reasonably confident. I felt the reasons it was likely to be him were several-fold. One is his sheer position in the photo which fits because essentially he was working for his father in law, my great grandpa. The suspected Charles is sitting on the ground, center, just to the right of the principals of the company, my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my grandpa's sister, the company stenographer, May - close to them yet humbly a bit below them. Another reason is that cast stone is dirty work, but he's wearing a crisp shirt and tie of a salesman, suggesting he's one of the few who did not work in production. Further, doing a closeup of this photo, one sees a lump below his knee, where our Charles lost part of his leg in a mining accident as a youngster, and the left knee may show where his prosthesis attached. Lastly, zooming in on his hands, on his left hand we see his only piece of jewelry, what appears to be a wedding ring. This photo was believed to have been taken 1918 to 1920, and indeed, he married Amy in 1920.
This all fit, yet it was not until May of 2011 that I connected with someone who had pictures of Charles and confirmed my guess correct.
Charles' marriage with my great aunt Amy failed sometime after they lost their newborn son. My Aunt Barbara (actually my dad's cousin), the daughter of Amy by her second marriage said that she had heard Charles got into the artificial limb business, and indeed, researching this, I had found this to be true. He had several patents, among which I found the following:
Solid ankle foot base, US patent 1884588
Method of making artificial limbs, US patent 1884589
Mold, US patent 1884590
Composition socket for artificial legs, US patent 1907511
Artificial limb, US patent 2152401
Ankle joint structure for artificial limbs, US patent 2152402
Charles also earned a mention in Time Magazine for his showmanship at an artificial limb trade show:
(Excerpt from Time, Oct. 18, 1937) - "More colorful than either old President Spievak (of the Association of Limb Manufacturers of America) or new President Aunger is Philadelphia Limb Manufacturer Charles Harris Davies who has been minus part of his left leg since a coal mine accident when he was a boy, now does a thriving trade in aluminum limbs, has branches as far away as Argentina. He irks his confreres by being flamboyant, stealing publicity from the convention. This year, to circumvent him, the convention appointed a publicity committee. But, while the more serious minded of the delegates sat down to ponder such questions as whether they were professionals or business men, and how to improve their rather strained relations with surgeons, Mr. Davies again stole the show by introducing a 14-year-old Airedale named Paul who has an aluminum rear leg which allows him to run, jump, sit up."
This article made me think... you have a young man who, despite his loss, hustles around as a salesman, and later who runs a successful limb business of his own. Clearly, he did not allow this to block his way.
In 1936, Chemical Week and Chemical Industries reported that limbs "made from Pyralin by CH Davies Co., Philadelphia, are on view at du Pont's place on the Boardwalk, Atlantic City..." [NOTE: Pyralin is a lightweight artificial ivory that can be produced in a variety of colors.]
Light Metals, in 1944 reported "By a novel hydraulic press the CH Davies Co. of Philadelphia can produce perfect shin sections in 5 minutes, with no rivets, seams or welds..."
In 1947, Federal Trade Commission decisions included information citing "CH Davies Co., Inc., a New Jersey corporation, with its place of business at Newark, NJ, and William F. Francis" and "CH Davies Co., Inc., and William F. Francis and Frederick Francis, in connection with the sale and distribution..." It is a limited view book online so this supplies us only with the names of potential colleagues.
In 1955, "Mr. and Mrs. R. L. Rohe of the C. H. Davies Co., Philadelphia, Pa" on January 10 and 11 attended "The Prosthetic Devices Study of New York University, in cooperation with the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of the United States Navy, conducted a two-day demonstration and discussion of the Navy below-knee prosthesis at the Prosthetic Testing and Development Laboratory, Veterans Administration, New York Regional Office. A complete fitting of this leg, which consists of a soft socket, plastic shank, and Navy functional ankle was performed before a group of prosthetists and physicians from the New York Metropolitan Area. During and after the fitting, discussions were conducted on Navy techniques in below-knee prosthetics."
Charles or his company show up in industrial directories and rehabilitation journals at least until 1962 at 1136 W. Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, as a manufacturer of artificial limbs. His business may in fact have been known at one time as Girard Artificial Limb Company as well as C. H. Davies Company.
Charles' first son is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The records kept by the cemetery, or at least the staff's inability to translate them, means I have walked the cemetery may times and not found the spot, marked or not. His child is supposed to be buried with a Charles H. David, which seems too close in name to be coincidental, but it must be their error. One employee told me the records have two plot locations for the child (one with his great grandma, Mary Elizabeth Kepler) and the other on the far side from our main plot. Another employee told me only about this latter one. Either way I cannot find Charles' first son's resting place, close though I surely am.
For some time, because of the info suggesting the child was buried with Charles H David, I thought this child was buried with his father, but in May of 2011 Charles' true resting place in Florida was confirmed so we know that is not true.
People researching Charles' line have usually not been able to find his place of death or rest correctly because there is another man of his name who died in Florida. I have checked that man out thoroughly and only the name matches; his date of birth was December 29, 1894 and I found the funeral home who had the names of his parents- not a match. In addition, that man was born in Gainesville, Florida.
Many stories about this gent abound. One of the best is that when he first went to Argentina on business, he was refused entry to the country which at that time had strict laws against disabled people entering, owing to then-current belief that they were a drain on society. In the company of a lady said to be a duchess, Charles swept her up and proceeded to dance around the ship's deck to show clearly he was not disabled. His demonstration was successful, and he later made contact with the ruling government and established a manufacturing plant in the country.
During his lifetime, Charles fathered three known children, though he was not consistently present for them all. His infant son with Amy Romberger seems to have been his first. With a lady named Carrie from northeastern Pennsylvania, Charles had his daughter Virginia. With a lady of German descent also from the coal regions he had his son Charles. At this time no documentation has been found to establish if these relationships were formal marriages. A 191 license was procured in Philadelphia for a Charles Davies and Anna I Romberger which seems likely but unproven to be our man.
Charles was a longtime Philadelphian at his passing; he'd been in Miami just three months when he died. His cause of death is not known for certain. Family has pointed out that just prior to his passing he had been through a long cold winter in New York. Others understand that Charles may have had black lung from his coal work in his youth, and that it finally caught up to him.
Big sincere thanks to Paul E. Twist who kindly went to the cemetery and got these wonderful pictures of Charles' resting place, and who also found a death notice for Charles from the Miami Herald.
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