Charles M. Gorsuch
(1881-1926)
Charles M. Gorsuch was born at
Connellsville, Fayette County, PA in 1881, the son of Richard
M. and Martha (Minerd) Gorsuch.
He never married, but "always have made my home with my mother," he once wrote, first at Maple Summit, Fayette County, PA, and then in Rockwood, Somerset County. He worked as a laborer.
Charles often helped soothe tensions when his father and mother argued and later separated. In 1921, after his father had been missing for some nine years, Charles was interviewed by a government investigator. In his testimony, now on file at the National Archives in Washington, DC, Charles recalled that in early 1912:
We had word that my father was sick at Vanderbilt and my brother Richard and I went to see him there and found him sick and weak, living alone in a shanty, and willing to return home if physically able to make the trip; As we had walked to Stewarton to take the train, it was necessary to return home and take a rig to Ohio Pyle Sta. and bring father home in a rig, so I did this the following day accompanied by Will Johnson.
In August 1924, Charles and his mother, mother, sister Edna Hyatt and brothers Richard and Carl, were among a crowd of 82 who attended the annual Minerd-Miner Reunion held at Lincoln's grove, near the Western Maryland Railroad Station in Confluence, Somerset County. In an article about the reunion, the Meyersdale Republican reported: "A very successful and pleasant reunion of the Minard family was held ... A fine picnic dinner was partaken of at 12:30 p.m., after L.L. Mountain invoked a blessing." In the article the family name was misspelled as "Gorsage."
Charles lived only a few years afterward, and died on June 21, 1926, of unknown causes. He is buried at the Maple Summit Church of God beside his ill-fated brother Floyd, and near his infant sister Leah and grandparents Charles and Adaline (Harbaugh) Minerd.
Copyright © 2000-2001, 2007 Mark A. Miner