1859
Charles Ledyard Norton, son of John Treadwell and Elizabeth (Cogswell) Norton, was born June 11, 1837, at Farmington, Conn.
After graduation from college he spent some months in study in the Sheffield Scientific School, and was then in the employ of the Hudson River Railroad. At the beginning of the Civil War he was a clerk in the United States Custom House in New York, but at once enlisted as a private in the Seventh New York Regiment and served in Maryland. In September, 1862, he was made Lieutenant of the Twenty-fifth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers, and in February, 1863, Captain, serving in the Red River campaign and at Port Hudson. The following October he was assigned as Captain to the Twenty-ninth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers (Colored), which he had helped organize. In December of the same year he was commissioner Colonel of the Seventy-eighth United States Colored Infantry, and served mainly in garrison and outpost duty in the Department of the Gulf. At the close of the war he was in charge of a large district in western Louisiana until he was mustered out of service in January, 1866.
He then leased a cotton plantation for a year and the next year made a voyage to England and back in a sailing vessel. In 1868 he became managing editor of the Christian Union, filling that position for ten years with great efficiency and with a geniality and kindliness that endeared him to all his associates. After two years of ill health, he was managing editor of The Continent from 1881 to 1884, of the Domestic Monthly and the American Canoeist for two years each, and of Outing in 1892-93, and was a frequent contributor to magazines on historical and out-of-door topics. He was very fond of boys and wrote several boys' stories. In 1890 he published "Political Americanisms" and a "Handbook of Florida."
While exploring in the great swamp near Tallahassee, Fla., in 1891, he suffered permanent injury from a fall of forty-five feet from a tree. He was an enthusiastic canoeist, one of the founders of the New York Canoe Club, and in 1878 wrote with John Habberton "Canoeing in Kannuckia."
During the last twenty years he had lived at Sandwich, Mass., in-a quaint old house filled with trophies of sea and land, and died there December 14, 1909, at the age of 72 years.
Col. Norton married September 1, 1863, Electa Melanie, daughter of Gustavus Mason Richards of New York City. She died in 1900, and December 10, 1903, he married Addie E., daughter of Hamilton and Mary (Meredith) Phillips, who survives him. A daughter is also living, Mrs. Jonathan Leonard.
Source: Obituary Record Of Graduates Of Yale University, Deceased from June, 1900, to June 1910, By Yale University, 1910; Pg. 1208-1210
