Summers, Charles

Flourished: 1853 to 1858 Illinois

Charles Summers, attorney and railroad official, was a resident of Clark County, Illinois, by 1852, when he became publisher and editor of the Marshall Telegraph, a Whig newspaper. Summers sold the newspaper in 1853 and that same year was appointed chief engineer of the Wabash Valley Railroad. By 1856, he was partnered in a law firm in Paris with James Steele. The following year, he was appointed a notary public and he served as a director of the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railroad. Summers held office in the Edgar County chapter of Freemasons. In 1858, he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives as a Douglas Democrat. About that same time in November 1858, Summers disappeared while traveling via train for business and never returned home. He was thought to have been last seen in the vicinity of Charleston or Mattoon. Summers married Eleanor Shaw in 1853, and following her death, he married Cynthia M. Trogdon in 1857; each marriage was survived by one son. Cynthia Trogdon Summers offered a reward for the discovery of her husband’s remains, under the belief that he had been murdered, but no trace of him was apparently found and she subsequently remarried.

Franklin William Scott, Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879, vol. 6 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1910), 236; William Henry Perrin, ed., History of Crawford and Clark Counties, Illinois (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1883), 323; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Clark County, 5 July 1853; Edgar County, 3 March 1857, 3 January 1866; Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Clark County, 291:256, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Du Page County Observer (Naperville, IL), 10 August 1853, 2:5; John Livingston, Livingston’s Law Register: Containing a Complete List of Lawyers in the United States (New York: Davies and Roberts, 1856), 111; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 13 January 1857, 2:4; 30 November 1858, 2:2; Memoirs of Abraham Lincoln In Edgar County, Illinois ([Paris, IL]: Edgar County Historical Society, 1925), 21; Nelson D. Elwood, Proceedings of the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the State of Illinois (Chicago: Chas. Scott, 1858), 67; The Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 10 November 1858, 4:2; Olney Times (IL), 25 March 1859, 2:5; The Press and Tribune (Chicago, IL), 11 June 1860, 2:3; The Daily Review (Decatur, IL), 22 December 1897, 6:5-6; Illinois, U.S., Deaths and Stillbirths Index, 1916-1947, 27 February 1916, Decatur, Macon County; 13 September 1930, Martinsville, Clark County (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2011).