here from the 1st of December 1901 to the 1st of June 1902, called the attention of investors to the resources of the city and state, but was not successful financially, and Congress appropriated $160,000 to make good the deficit.
Much information concerning Charleston may be obtained in A.S. Salley’s A Guide and Historical Sketch of Charleston (Charleston, 1903), and in Mrs St Julien Ravenel’s Charleston; The Place and the People (New York, 1906). The best history of Charleston is William A. Courtenay’s Charleston, S.C.: The Centennial of Incorporation (Charleston, 1884). There is also a good sketch by Yates Snowden in L. P. Powell’s Historic Towns of the Southern States (New York, 1900). For the earthquake see the account by Carl McKinley in the Charleston Year-Book for 1886. See also South Carolina.
CHARLESTON, the capital of West Virginia, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Kanawha county, situated near the centre of the state, on the N. bank of the Kanawha river, at the mouth of the Elk river, about 200 m. E. of Cincinnati, Ohio, and about 130 m. S.W. of Wheeling. Pop. (1890) 6742; (1900) 11,099, of whom 1787 were negroes, and 353 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 22,996. It is served by the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Toledo & Ohio Central, the Coal & Coke, and the Kanawha & West Virginia (39 m. to Blakeley) railways, and by several river transportation lines on the Kanawha river (navigable throughout the year by means of movable locks) connecting with Ohio and Mississippi river ports. The city is attractively built on high level land, above the river; in addition to a fine customs house, court house and high school, it contains the West Virginia state capitol, erected in 1880. The libraries include the state law library, with 14,000 volumes in 1908, and the library of the state Department of Archives and History, with about 11,000 volumes. Charleston is in the midst of a region rich in bituminous coal, the shipment of which by river and rail constitutes one of its principal industries. Oil wells in the vicinity also furnish an important product for export, and there are iron and salt mines near. An ample supply of natural gas is utilized by its manufacturing establishments; and among its manufactures are axes, lumber, foundry and machine shop products, furniture, boilers, woollen goods, glass and chemical fire-engines. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $1,261,815 in 1900 to $2,728,074 in 1905, or 116.2%, a greater rate of increase than that of any other city (with 8000 or more inhabitants) in the state during this period. The first permanent white settlement at Charleston was made soon after the close of the War of Independence; it was one of the places through which the streams of immigrants entered the Ohio Valley, and it became of considerable importance as a centre of transfer and shipment, but it was not until the development of the coal-mining region that it became industrially important. Charleston was incorporated in 1794, and was chartered as a city in 1870. Since the latter year it has been the seat of government of West Virginia, with the exception of the decade 1875–1885, when Wheeling was the capital.
CHARLESTOWN, formerly a separate city of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., but since 1874 a part of the city of Boston, with which it had long before been in many respects practically one. It is situated on a small peninsula on Boston harbour, between the mouths of the Mystic and Charles rivers; the first bridge across the Charles, built in 1786, connected Charlestown and Boston. A United States navy yard (1800), occupying about 87 acres, and the Massachusetts state prison (1805) are here; the old burying-ground contains the grave of John Harvard and that of Thomas Beecher, the first American member of the famous Beecher family; and there is a soldiers’ and sailors’ monument (1872), designed by Martin Milmore. Charlestown was founded in 1628 or 1629, being the oldest part of Boston, and soon rose into importance; it was organized as a township in 1630, and was chartered as a city in 1847. Within its limits was fought, on the 17th of June 1775, the battle of Bunker Hill (q.v.), when Charlestown was almost completely destroyed by the British. The Bunker Hill Monument commemorates the battle; and the navy yard at Moulton’s Point was the landing-place of the attacking British troops. Little was done toward the rebuilding of Charlestown until 1783. The original territory of the township was very large, and from parts of it were formed Woburn (1642), Malden (1649), Stoneham (1725), and Somerville (1842); other parts were annexed to Cambridge, to Medford and to Arlington. S. F. B. Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, was born here; and Charlestown was the birthplace and home of Nathaniel Gorham (1738–1796), a member of the Continental Congress in 1782–1783 and 1785–1787, and its president in 1786; and was the home of Loammi Baldwin (1780–1838), a well-known civil engineer; of Samuel Dexter (1761–1816), an eminent lawyer, secretary of war and for a short time secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of President John Adams; and of Oliver Holden (1765–1831), a composer of hymn-tunes, including “Coronation.”
See R. Frothingham, History of Charlestown (Boston, 1845), covering 1629–1775; J. F. Hunnewell, A Century of Town Life . . . 1775–1887 (Boston, 1888); and Timothy T. Sawyer, Old Charlestown (1902).
CHARLET, NICOLAS TOUSSAINT (1792–1845), French designer and painter, more especially of military subjects, was born in Paris on the 20th of December 1792. He was the son of a dragoon in the Republican army, whose death in the ranks left the widow and orphan in very poor circumstances. Madame Charlet, however, a woman of determined spirit and an extreme Napoleonist, managed to give her boy a moderate education at the Lycée Napoléon, and was repaid by his lifelong affection. His first employment was in a Parisian mairie, where he had to register recruits: he served in the National Guard in 1814, fought bravely at the Barrière de Clichy, and, being thus unacceptable to the Bourbon party, was dismissed from the mairie in 1816. He then, having from a very early age had a propensity for drawing, entered the atelier of the distinguished painter Baron Gros, and soon began issuing the first of those lithographed designs which eventually brought him renown. His “Grenadier de Waterloo,” 1817, with the motto “La Garde meurt et ne se rend pas” (a famous phrase frequently attributed to Cambronne, but which he never uttered, and which cannot, perhaps, be traced farther than to this lithograph by Charlet), was particularly popular. It was only towards 1822, however, that he began to be successful in a professional sense. Lithographs (about 2000 altogether), water-colours, sepia-drawings, numerous oil sketches, and a few etchings followed one another rapidly; there were also three exhibited oil pictures, the first of which was especially admired—“Episode in the Campaign of Russia” (1836), the “Passage of the Rhine by Moreau” (1837), “Wounded Soldiers Halting in a Ravine” (1843). Besides the military subjects in which he peculiarly delighted, and which found an energetic response in the popular heart, and kept alive a feeling of regret for the recent past of the French nation and discontent with the present,—a feeling which increased upon the artist himself towards the close of his career,—Charlet designed many subjects of town life and peasant life, the ways of children, &c., with much wit and whim in the descriptive mottoes. One of the most famous sets is the “Vie civile, politique, et militaire du Caporal Valentin,” 50 lithographs, dating from 1838 to 1842. In 1838 his health began to fail owing to an affection of the chest. He died in Paris on the 30th of October 1845. Charlet was an uncommonly tall man, with an expressive face, bantering and good natured; his character corresponded, full of boyish fun and high spirits, with manly independence, and a vein of religious feeling, and he was a hearty favourite among his intimates, one of whom was the painter Géricault. Charlet married in 1824, and two sons survived him.
A life of Charlet was published in 1856 by a military friend, De la Combe. (W. M. R.)
CHARLEVILLE, a town of north-eastern France, in the department of Ardennes, 151 m. N.E. of Paris on the Eastern railway. Pop. (1906) 19,693. Charleville is situated within a bend of the Meuse on its left bank, opposite Mézières, with which it is united by a suspension bridge. The town was founded in 1606 by Charles III. (Gonzaga), duke of Nevers, afterwards duke of Mantua, and is laid out on a uniform plan. Its central and most interesting portion is the Place Ducale, a large square
