Background
Charles Edgar was born on April 9, 1862 in Me tuchen, New Jersey, the son of Benjamin Winant and Phebe (Dunham) Edgar.
Charles Edgar was born on April 9, 1862 in Me tuchen, New Jersey, the son of Benjamin Winant and Phebe (Dunham) Edgar.
Until he was eighteen years old, he attended the public schools of his native town and upon graduation from high school in 1880, went to Chicago, 111.
After four or five years of service, during which time the first real steps were being taken in the development of the lumber industry of Wisconsin and Michigan, Edgar moved with his family to Wausau, Wisconsin. Here he entered the employ of the Jacob Mortensen Lumber Company of which he soon became general manager. He continued with this company for four or five years and then formed, with Walter Alexander, the Alexander-Edgar Lumber Company. Edgar was then but twenty-eight years old and had had approximately ten years’ experience in the lumber business. In spite of his youth he possessed unusual business ability, and in the succeeding twelve years under his leadership his company played a prominent part not only in the development of the northern lumber areas of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but also of the southern pine districts as well. Throughout this period Edgar maintained a close contact with all branches of the lumbering industry and even found time to perfect certain improvements in saw-mill machinery. As the band saw was originally applied to cutting logs, the backward movement of the log carriage would, if there were any slivers on the cut face of the log, be liable to force those slivers against the smooth edge of the band saw and either distort or break it. To obviate this danger, there was developed a lateral adjustment on the back movement of the carriage called an “off-set, ” so that the log returned for a new cut out of contact with the saw. Edgar first made an improvement on the “off-set, ” and then designed a band saw with teeth on both its edges so that the saw cut in both directions and thus eliminated the off-setting mechanism. He patented this device in 1894 and 1895, and subsequently sold the rights to a manufactory in Milwaukee. The process has been in general use by lumber manufacturers for sawing certain classes of small timber ever since. On account of ill health Edgar was compelled to retire from active business about 1902, and for the next ten years lived on his farm near Charlottesville, Va. In 1914, however, because of the death of one of his associates, he was again obliged to take up active work as president and general director of the Wisconsin & Arkansas Lumber Company of Malvern, Ark. , and he continued in that capacity until his death. During the World War he was identified with the Southern Pine Emergency Bureau, later was a member of the Lumber Committee of the Council of National Defence, and finally was lumber director of the War Industries Board, in which capacity he served until the end of the war.
the Southern Pine Emergency Bureau,
the Lumber Committee of the Council of National Defence, lumber director of the War Industries Board.
On Dec. 18, 1884, Edgar was married in Chicago, to Gertrude Pomeroy of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, daughter of George W. Pomeroy. At the time of his sudden death in Miami, Florida, he was survived by his wife, three sons, and a daughter.
