Background
Carpenter was a son of Samuel and Sarah (Montgomery) Carpenter, of Palmetto, Tennessee.
Carpenter was a son of Samuel and Sarah (Montgomery) Carpenter, of Palmetto, Tennessee.
He was schooled in a private institution at Palmetto, and attended the State University at Bloomington, Indiana, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Phi and graduated in 1876 with an Bachelor of Arts degree.
In 1886 he moved to Coffeyville as a partner in the Condon Bank office established at Coffeyville that year. He served as president of the Coffeyville Board of Education and trustee of the Montgomery County High School at Independence, Kansas. Carpenter married in 1892 at Rockport, Indiana to Temple West, who was born in Pike County, Indiana.
She was a prominent woman of Southern Kansas in religious, social and public affairs, president of the Carnegie Library of Coffeyville, and the first woman honored with a place on the school board of that city.
When the Dalton Gang attempted to rob two banks in Coffeyville on October 5, 1892, Charles T. Carpenter was taken hostage in his bank. In the gun battle that followed the failed raid, which turned out to be the gang"s last, four townspeople were killed, and four gang members were killed and the fifth captured and imprisoned.
Carpenter was not physically injured in the affray.
