A brief and incomplete biography of Papa Charles:

Nobody ever called him Papa Charles.  His children called him Papa.  I call him Papa Charles so that it's clear who he is: the father of the five Stokey siblings, and the ex-husband of Mama Margaret.

Here’s a picture of Papa Charles from his obituary.  I don’t know when the picture was taken.

Charles Frederick Stokey was born in 1845 in Ohio - probably Canton.  His parents were farmers who immigrated from the Alsace area.  He had many siblings.

Charles made it into the tail end of the Civil War, joining up in 1865.  I don’t think his parents were too pleased.  I need to find the letters he wrote home.  (They should be in Ming’s apartment in Cambridge.)  He saw no action.  But he acquired an ailment that apparently lasted him the rest of his life.  There are forms and forms and more forms about it over the decades.

Side note: Louisa May Alcott was a nurse in the Civil War.  No, she didn’t meet Papa Charles.  But she got sick, and was given some sort of mercury treatment.  Unsurprisingly, she never fully recovered.  That’s what I think of when I see the papers about Papa Charles’s Civil War-related ailment: bad medical treatment.

He attended college in western Pennsylvania and became a teacher of languages at Canton High School.  He would have picked up French and possibly some German from his parents.  For French, I remember that one of those letters he wrote home had “Reçu” - “Received” - with a date written on it.  As for German, my mother told me that he attended a German-speaking school as a child, but I don’t know how she knew that; perhaps Alma told her.  Alma herself occasionally wrote “Gott sei dank” in her letters.  She may have picked it up from her father.

Papa Charles married Margaret Provines - Mama Margaret - on December 23, 1874.  She was a fellow teacher, but I doubt she continued teaching after the marriage.  Papa Charles was involved in teachers associations, and I think Mama Margaret’s family tended to be less interested in education than she was, so she might have considered marrying Charles to be a step up in the world.  Additionally, he was probably an attractive and vigorous personality.  And what did Charles see in Mama Margaret?  She was pleasant, competent, and intelligent.  But I suspect that what he liked about her was that she laughed at his jokes.  I don’t know for sure that she laughed at his jokes.  I don’t even know that he made jokes.  But the dots I connect say that he did.  And if she didn’t laugh at his jokes, then she wouldn’t have been much fun for him.
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Later, Mama Margaret said: “Papa used to tell me that he hoped you children would inherit my disposition with his brains."

Things were happy initially.  Although there are very few childhood stories in the letters that we have, I think there must have been lots of jokes and quite a few beloved cats as well, because there are lots of jokes and cats in the letters we have from after the kids grew up.

Additionally, Papa Charles encouraged his children’s scientific interests.  Besides being a teacher of foreign languages, he was also an official government weather reporter, with a small station on his property.  It was probably like a simple weather stationthat you can buy today.  He is occasionally quoted in the local newspaper as the weatherman.  I haven’t noticed any weather predictions; it was more along the lines of “It’s the coldest day since such-and-such an exact date.  Weatherman Charles Stokey says so.”

He must have encouraged his daughters every bit as much as he did his sons.  In all the letters I have read from his children, there is never a shred of a suggestion that women should not pursue an education - even an advanced education.  And the four wives (two each) of Will and Fred were intelligent women able to support themselves.  It can’t be pure chance that Will and Fred chose that type of wife.

​None of the children showed an interest in languages.  They learned them, if necessary, for their work, but not for fun, as far as I can tell.  But there was perhaps an attitude that was conveyed.  If any of them ever learned Latin or Ancient Greek, it doesn’t show up.  The ancient classics didn’t interest them.  They looked forward, not back.  Papa Charles and Mama Margaret gave their children a new-fashioned upbringing.

But things changed in the family.  At some point, probably in the early 1890s, Papa Charles - the spouse credited with the brains rather than the good disposition - developed some serious anger management issues.  I don’t think there’s any way of knowing the cause of them.  In the 1890s, there wouldn’t have been any resources where he would go for help, even if he wanted to.

The issues manifested themselves in abuse of his family, mostly of his wife, but also of his children on occasion.  There were serious incidents as early as 1895, but there must have been calmer times between the incidents, because it wasn’t until January of 1900 that Mama Margaret finally moved out and filed for divorce.  Papa Charles, as the weatherman, was apparently something of a local celebrity, and therefore the story made the headlines: top right on page 1 of The Stark County Democrat.

As noted in the sub-header, the petition was copied in full into the newspaper article, which is a very useful thing because the family did not talk about the divorce later.  And reading the petition, one can see why they would not want to discuss it.  There was verbal abuse, there was physical abuse in which the children did their best to protect their mother, and there were weird attempts to make Mama Margaret sign papers saying everything was all her fault.  (She refused.)

What we learn from the newspapers is that Papa Charles absolutely denied all the accusations in the divorce petition.  I’m inclined to believe the accusations, however, because the children were available to be called as witnesses.

So here are three things we know about Papa Charles around 1900:

1. He was a serious domestic abuser.

2. He had a correspondence back and forth with the government about how his Civil War service had utterly ruined his health.  (I need to grit my teeth and put some more about it in here.  It’s not pleasant reading.)

3. He continued his life as a minor local celebrity.  Despite issues with his family and with his health, he was functional out in public.

It’s all very strange.

The divorce came about.  I don’t know exactly when that happened; probably sometime in 1900.  And then in December of 1900 his former mother-in-law, Jane Gracey Provines, died, and he was executor of her will, which was made in 1897.  That’s all I know about the executorship, but it must have been sort of awkward.

The story that was handed down to me was that Alma was very much involved in making the separation happen.  My impression is that Mama Margaret was not such a passive person.  But there is no doubt that the children, for the most part, sided with Mama Margaret.  There was some communication - Papa Charles gave Eva a commemorative spoon when she graduated from high school in 1903, and later that summer Fred helped Papa Charles with a science presentation.   But in 1904 Mama Margaret moved away from Canton, along with Fred and Eva.  Will and Alma were already gone - Will in the Army, Alma pursuing her degrees in botany.   Only Laura stayed in Canton, and she became the communication link between Papa Charles and the rest of the family when needed.  Apparently Papa Charles had loaned Laura some money for her osteopathic education, so that would have been another connection for her.

Will did write to his father in 1910 when he became engaged to Margaret, his first wife, and he sent photos.  I suspect that Margaret (that’s Margaret his wife, not Mama Margaret) encouraged him to do so.  Three years later, Laura notified Papa Charles that Will’s wife had died in childbirth, and Papa Charles wrote to Will, saying: “It is the saddest news to me since the death of my Mother - Father died nineteen years before.”

​Papa Charles died in 1916.  Laura held a funeral for him in her home.