Charles L. Talley was born around 1845 in Delaware to William and Margaret Talley. His father was a master wheelwright who owned $1,200 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Brandywine Hundred, Delaware.

 

He remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. He enlisted in the Union army in July 1864 and mustered in as a private in Company D of the 7^th Delaware Infantry. The regiment, raised in response to Confederate cavalry raids in Maryland, spent the following month guarding the city of Baltimore. Talley mustered out on August 12, 1864. He mourned President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination as “one of the awfulest crimes ever known in history.” He observed that he “neve[r] in my life saw sutch morning as there was for Abraham Lincoln,” and he predicted that the president would “pass into history as the Savor of his Country.”

 

Talley moved to Philadelphia after the war, and he married Rebecca McBride there on November 28, 1867. Their son Charles was born around 1869. He worked in the “house furnishing” business, and by 1910, he owned and operated his own hotel. He died sometime after 1920.

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