Charles F. Getter

Item

Title

Charles F. Getter

Date

ca. May 1851 to August 7, 1920

Description

Charles F. Getter is first documented in Stickley’s General Ledger in 1900, but he may have been associated with Stickley at the Auburn Prison, since he is recorded in 1892 as a “prison foreman” in the Auburn city Directory. Born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania he is listed as “lumber hand” in the 1880 census, and living in Harmony, Pennsylvania. Because of their similar ages and proximity to Brandt, Stickley and Getter may have known each other in Pennsylvania, and Getter’s subsequent moves to Binghamton and Auburn, New York only strengthen this notion. By 1900, the Federal Census recorded Getter as the foreman of a “Chair Manufactory,” a position he appears to have held up until the end of his life. According to an obituary, Getter died at work and was his body was returned to Brandt, Pennsylvania to be buried.

Although Stickley’s factory employed some 250 people, the number of family units and the proximity of workers’ homes to one another probably made it a smaller, more tightly-knit community as opposed to today’s workplaces. In one of the stranger instances of how closed these circles could be, Charles Getter’s son (also named Charles) was arrested for robbing tavern owner Cornelius Kille, who had worked as a chairmaker in the Stickley factory at the turn of the century.