Charles Lancaster

Charles Lancaster's signature, 1869 (SCSU Archives)

Mary Dean Lancaster, 1880-1889 (Ancestry.com)

Charles Frank Lancaster was born about 1850 in New Brunswick, Canada. His father, A. M. Lancaster, was a farmer. Charles immigrated to Calais, Maine, before coming to St. Cloud by September 1869, when he began his studies among the first students of the Third State Normal School. During his studies, he boarded with the family of John and Maria Wettstein, a Swiss and German immigrant family.

As the only immigrant graduate in the school’s first class, Charles is considered St. Cloud State University’s first internationally-born student.

After graduating, Charles taught in Minnesota public schools. In 1874, he married Mary “Minnie” E. Dean. The two had settled in Shakopee, Minnesota, by 1875, and their first child, Charles Frank, Jr., was born there on June 4, 1875. Their second child, Lillian “Lilly” Estelle, was born the next year. By 1880, they had moved in with Mary's father, Rev. Silas H. Dean, on his farm near Claremont. Charles, Jr. was not recorded in the 1880 census, indicating he may have died young. The family later moved to South Dakota, where on February 4, 1884, they had another daughter, Hortense, who later went by Katie Elizabeth. In Marshall, South Dakota, Charles and Mary ran a boarding house. Charles passed away circa 1887, a year before Mary remarried.