Charles Erastus Vawter was the son of John Henderson and Clara (Peck) Vawter. He was born on June 9, 1841, in Monroe County, Virginia.
His father, a farmer, and civil engineer, at the age of sixty joined the Confederate army with his four sons, and all five in time became captains.
Charles, who had entered Emory and Henry College in 1858, left upon the outbreak of the war to enlist in the Monroe County Guards, a part of the "Stonewall Brigade. "
Released in June, he returned to Emory and Henry, where he graduated in 1866. After teaching for a year, he entered the University of Virginia, graduated in mathematics with distinction, and was elected professor of mathematics and teacher of Hebrew at Emory and Henry.
Vawter soon proved himself a leader; he was appointed a captain of sharpshooters in 1862 and served in the field until March 1865, when he was captured and imprisoned in Fort Delaware. Taking office in 1868, he served the University of Virginia for ten years. In 1878, Vawter was selected to build and organize the Miller Manual Labor School of Albemarle County, Virginia; the trustees of the school, appointed by the county judge, were Col. Charles Scott Venable and Prof. Francis Henney Smith, of the University of Virginia, his old friends. This school was founded by a bequest of Samuel Miller of $1, 250, 000 in Virginia state certificates; Vawter persuaded the legislature to pass an act which preserved its endowment to the school and aided many other schools in Virginia holding similar certificates.
Vawter came to his task with enthusiasm, rich experience, and clear views on education. He was greatly interested in the development of public schools in Virginia and the South and had very definite views of the kind of education the Southern people needed. The Miller School, an institution for orphan boys and girls, established on a farm, with buildings and shops especially erected and equipped, offered him a rare opportunity to realize his ideal of a school that would train the mind and hand together. He made it his life work to build here an industrial school which became a model for all the South and caused him to be recognized as a leader in the new education.
He was a member of the state board of education and rendered valuable service in organizing the public schools of Virginia under the constitution of 1902; he served as chairman of the board of trustees of the Normal and Industrial School for girls at Farmville, Virginia, which became a State Teachers' College; he was also chairman of the board of the Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes at Petersburg and of the state board of charities and corrections. For a number of years, he was rector of the board of trustees of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and aided President J. M. McBryde in shaping the policies of that institution.
Vawter took great interest in the work of the Conference for Education in the South, which he helped to organize in 1898, taking a part in all of their meetings and speaking wherever he could help. He had also a large part in the educational work of the Methodist Episcopal Church (South); he was a trustee of Emory and Henry College, and president for many years of the Virginia Sunday School Association.
In July of 1866, Vawter married Virginia Longley, daughter of Prof. Edmund Longley. Seven children were born of this union, all of whom survived their father.
27 September 1810 - 29 June 1880
23 January 1800 - 8 June 1877
14 January 1848 - 5 June 1918
14 June 1880 - 20 March 1881
10 June 1882 - 7 November 1962
March 1872 - 21 December 1951
29 May 1867 - 16 April 1944
1877 - 1931
24 May 1894 - 8 September 1912
