Charles H. Knapp was a longtime court clerk in frontier Phoenix, Arizona.
Knapp was born in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, September 7, 1845, to Charles Knapp and Susan Ludlow. While yet a child, he moved with his parents to Terra Haute, Indiana in the spring of 1850. He was subsequently educated at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
He was but 19 when he accepted a bounty to enlist in the Union army on March 11, 1864, for a term of three years. Assigned to Company I, Eleventh Regiment, Indiana Volunteer infantry, he was promoted to corporal on May 2, 1865, and discharged on July 26, 1865, the Civil War having ended.
Following the war, he lived for a time in Chillicothe, Missouri, before moving to McPherson, Kansas. On October 8, 1873, Knapp married Anna Rezzer in Newton, Kansas. They had one son and four daughters.
In April of 1881, the Knapps moved to Phoenix. Charles served as either deputy clerk or
clerk of District Court for the rest of his life. He was said to have been a popular and
capable official, discharging his duties in a most satisfactory manner.
In 1884, the Knapps had a fourth daughter, Anne, but she died on June 26, 1886, at the age of two. Mrs. Knapp died on January 30, 1889, ten days after giving birth to a fifth daughter. Both was interred next to little Anne in the family plot in Masons Cemetery.
Two years later, Charles Knapp married Mary Ann Davidson. She was twenty years his junior and from Alexander, Louisiana.
Charles Knapp was a prominent member of the Grand Army of the Republic, (GAR) and became a commander of the Phoenix Knights Templar. Being only 53 at the time of his death on November 28, 1898, he had not yet filed for a military pension. He was laid to rest with his first wife and children in the Masons cemetery, Block 10, Lot 2, Grave 2. His grave has a military headstone.
His widow applied for a widow’s pension, but her application was initially rejected. She tried again later and it was accepted on October 19, 1916.
- by Val
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