Charles A. Page, son of John H. and Julia Fellows Page, was born in Dixon, Illinois, May 22, 1838. At the age of eighteen he entered Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, from which he graduated in 1859. For two years he was editor of The Mount Vernon News. Because of his avid support for Abraham Lincoln and the newly-formed Republican party, Page was appointed a clerk in the Fifth Auditor's Office, United States Treasury Department.
During the Civil War, Page had a brilliant career as war correspondent for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. (In 1899, James R. Gilmore edited Page's newspaper articles in Letters of a War Correspondent, Boston, L. C. Page and Company, 1899). On June 19, 1865, President Andrew Johnson appointed Page as United States consul at Zurich, Switzerland. Page continued in this
capacity until he was “suspended” by President Ulysses S. Grant on May 25, 1869.
In 1866, while in Switzerland, Page, along with his brother George H. Page, was instrumental in forming the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company at Cham, Suisse. This business developed into a multi-million dollar operation by the end of the century.
On May 15, 1867, at Washington, D.C., Page married Grace Coues, daughter of Samuel E. and Charlotte Haven Todd Coues of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Four children resulted from this union. Charles Page died in London, England on May 26, 1873.
