Early Years
Charles Howard was born, according his enlistment record, in about 1842 in Rockingham County, Virginia. Little is known of his early life. He is probably the Charles Howard recorded in the 1870 census in Portsmouth, Ohio.
On June 16, 1875, Howard decided to enlist in the army, going in to a recruiting office in Cleveland, Ohio. His enlistment papers describe the thirty-three-year-old man as 5 foot 5 inches tall, with hazel eyes, brown hair and a dark complexion. From Cleveland, he was sent to Newport Barracks, Kentucky for orientation. A musician by trade, Recruit Howard was assigned to the Fourth Infantry Band. He was sent to Fort Omaha, Nebraska, headquarters of the Department of the Platte, and then left with 158 other new recruits aboard a Union Pacific train for Carter Station in southwest Wyoming. From there, the detachment of recruits marched the eleven miles south to Fort Bridger, headquarters of the Fourth Infantry, where they arrived on the afternoon of September 10, 1875.
Read more about this topic: Charles Howard (photographer)
Famous quotes related to early years:
“Parents ... are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfil the promise of their early years.”
—Anthony Powell (b. 1905)