Charles Leaman was born on September 3, 1845, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to Henry and Catharine Leaman. His father was a farmer who owned $27,000 of real estate and $1,960 of personal property by 1860. Leaman grew up and attended school in Paradise, Pennsylvania.
He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on December 5, 1862, and he served as a private aboard the USS Philadelphia. As he explained to his family, he “had always had an idea of joining the army.” An advertisement in a local newspaper, however, persuaded him to join the Marines instead. The Philadelphia became the flagship of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and Leaman spent most of his time patrolling the coast of South Carolina.
In October 1864, he confessed that “I cannot say I am excited” about the upcoming presidential election. Nonetheless, he was “much interested as to how the election goes for I think if the right man is elected it will satisfy them that the North is determand to fight it out with out asking for any terms from armed Rebels.”
Many of his shipmates supported Democratic candidate George B. McClellan, but Leaman bitterly opposed him. A Democratic victory, he explained, would “sell the labors of our Armies for the past three years and more for a nominal and perishable peace.” Leaman refused to “vote for any man that thinks of peace untill the south acknowledge there error by laying down their arms and are willing to join us with the spirit of ’76.” He cheered the news of Abraham Lincoln’s reelection, which “shows we are still a United States.”
In April 1865, he rejoiced that “The War is Over. I can not find words to express my gratitude.” He expressed great ambivalence, however, toward African Americans’ freedom. On April 15, he listened to speeches by abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Tilton, and Henry Wilson. “The audience,” he reported, “was nearly all colored, and the addresses…[did not] suit the occation in my opinion.” He argued that African Americans were not yet “fit for freedom,” and he dismissed the commission of Black officers as “to[o] premature.” The “day for such things may come,” he wrote, “but the colored man requires a preparation in every way before such responsability can be placed upon him.”
He was promoted to corporal in November 1865, and he was discharged in December 1865. Leaman returned to Paradise after the war and attended college. He became a Presbyterian minister around 1874, and he moved to China soon afterward to work as a missionary. He married Lucy Crouch around 1879, and they had at least two children: Mary, born around 1880; and Lucy, born on November 6, 1881. The family visited Pennsylvania in 1882, but they returned to China in May 1883. As Leaman explained, he felt it his duty to “preach among the heathen the unsearchable riches of Christ.” They fled to Tokyo, Japan, during the Boxer Rebellion.
His wife died in the 1910s, and he eventually returned to Paradise. By 1920, he was living in his brother Henry’s household in Paradise. He died sometime after 1920.