Charles Tufts was the son of Daniel and Abigail (Tufts) Tufts. He was born on July 17, 1781 in a part of Medford later incorporated in Somerville, Massachussets.
He was a lineal descendant of an early English colonist, Peter Tufts, who settled in Charlestown, Massachussets, about 1638.
Tufts received very little formal education but contrived, nevertheless, to acquire a considerable fund of knowledge.
It is believed that he was long associated with his father in farming and brickmaking, pursuits which he followed in later years.
When in 1840 the Massachusetts Convention of Universalists proposed the establishment of a theological seminary, Tufts offered a building site. Before the plan could materialize, however, it became identified with attempts to bolster up the Clinton Liberal Institute (1845) and resulted finally in a project for a Universalist college (May 1847).
As the movement progressed, Tufts offered approximately twenty acres of land on the Medford-Somerville line.
Although some of the conditions attached to the grant caused hesitation, the site, known as Walnut Tree Hill, was formally approved by the trustees of the nascent institution on Jan. 8, 1852, and a charter of incorporation was presently obtained for Tufts College.
In 1856 and 1864 Tufts deeded other properties to the college under various conditions, one of which was that its name should never be changed. He also served as a trustee of the college from 1856 until his death.
His gifts, amounting altogether to more than one hundred acres of land, together with lesser adjacent tracts from other sources, established the college in a physical sense and placed it in a unique position within the Boston metropolitan area.
He died in Somerville, Massachusetts, which is also home to part of the Tufts University campus, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.
A strongly religious man in adult life, he became deeply interested in the work of the Universalist Church, first in Charlestown and later in Somerville, and it was to a considerable extent his proselyting interest in Universalist doctrines that impelled him to set aside a portion of his extensive farm properties for educational purposes.
Tufts was a man of medium stature, with small, mild features and a gentle manner which gave little hint of his decided opinions and inflexible will. He was shrewd in his calculations, but "without a particle of deceit. " Both natural inclination and extreme deafness caused him to live somewhat as a recluse, and it was only through his benefactions that he came into public notice.
On April 8, 1821, he married Hannah, daughter of Jacob and Hannah Robinson, of Lexington, Massachussets, an earnest and liberal-minded young woman fourteen years his junior, who exerted a strong guiding influence upon her husband.
They had no children.
