Charles A. Baker

CHARLES A. BAKER of Wichita lacked only three or four months of being a native son of Kansas. He has spent practically his entire career in this state, and by close attention to his business as a plumber has built up one of the leading establishments at Wichita, and his business is registered under the state laws.

He was born at Rio, Wisconsin, June 30, 1870, and it was in September of the same year that his parents moved to Arkansas City, Kansas. After a public school education, gained in Wichita, he began an apprenticeship at the plumbing trade, and followed it as a journeyman until 1900. Since then for more than fifteen years he has been in the plumbing business for himself, first at Hutchinson but since 1902 at Wichita.

Mr. Baker is a thirty-second degree Mason and a member of the Mystic Shrine, and is also an Elk. His father was an old soldier, so he has continued the military record of the family and is now serving as a regimental quarter-master with the rank of captain in the Second Kansas Infantry. He has been on the border at Eagle Pass and San Antonio, Texas, since July 1, 1916.

On December 4, 1895, Mr. Baker married Miss Lillie E. Bennett of Wichita. They have a daughter Marcia Helen, who is now a student in the Wichita High School.

Mr. Baker's father, Thomas Baker, was a Kansan pioneer. He was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, grew up in that state and was a farmer, and in January, 1864, enlisted in the Third United States Cavalry for a term of three years. During the last 1 1/2 years of the war his company was stationed along the Mississippi River, and in a skirmish with some guerrillas in Arkansas he was wounded in the hip. When his enlistment expired he set up a barber shop at Rio, Wisconsin, but in 1870 started for Kansas. He went by rail as far as Emporia, and from there by prairie schooner to Arkansas City. He was in the barber business there a few years, then removed to Winfield, and in 1878 came to Wichita, where he worked as a barber until his death in May.

Transcribed from volume 4, page 1786 of A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, written and compiled by William E. Connelley, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, copyright 1918; originally transcribed 1998, modified 2003 by Carolyn Ward.

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