Charles Christian Edward Kretschmar was born around 1806 in present-day Germany. He eventually immigrated to America and settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He had a daughter named Mary around 1852. He married Catherine Shand around 1853, and they had at least three children: Henrietta, born around 1855; Wilhelmina, born around 1858; and Ophelia, born around 1862. He worked as a printer, and by 1860, he owned $50 of personal property. He supported the Republican Party during the Civil War, he denounced “slave-drivers and copperheads.” He celebrated the Union war effort as a "just cause," and he hoped that "this infernal rebellion of the slave-drivers will be crushed at last, and slavery--that hideous abomination, the shame and the curse of this country--will perish together with it." He died in Lancaster on June 20, 1867.

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