Charles W. and Alberta Walker French, a Family Tragedy, and Questionable Business Practices

Portraits of Charles Walker French and his wife, the former Miss Alberta Walker, were donated to the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center by a relative of Mrs. French. The photos were taken in Mansfield about 1902.

Charles W. French was born near Wakeman, Ohio in 1862. A lengthy biography of Mr. French appeared in the book A Centennial Biographical History of Richland County, edited by A. J. Baughman in 1901. In 1888, Mr. French worked in Sandusky, with an excavation contracting business. Alberta Walker was private secretary and bookkeeper for the business, which was operating in an upstairs floor of a building on Columbus Avenue. 

Tragedy struck the family on Thanksgiving morning, November 29, 1888, when Alberta’s father, Albert Walker, was killed in an explosion. Mr. French’s firm had been given a contract to excavate the cellar of the Odd Fellows building under construction on Washington Row. 

Mr. Walker was the foreman for the job. Albert had picked up six sticks of dynamite from Mr. French’s dynamite storage house on Perkins Avenue, and placed them on the stove of the office to thaw out. When the paper on the outside of the sticks of dynamite caught fire, Albert Walker rushed four of the sticks to the washstand to try to put out the caps. In the process, the dynamite exploded and Albert Walker was fatally injured. Mr. Walker died while on the way to the hospital.

On June 27, 1889, Charles W. French married Alberta Walker. By 1900, Mr. and Mrs. French were living in the Mansfield area, where he worked with several short line railroads (many of which failed), as well as serving as president of the Baker Stone Company; Mrs. French was the secretary of the company. 

About 1902, Charles and Alberta French moved to California, where Charles promoted a steel company and a railroad. He was involved with several schemes that did not come to fruition.  A New York Times article from August 25, 1921 reported that he was being investigated for securities fraud, and the September 3, 1921 issue of the Sandusky Register reported that he was arrested for fraud as a result of his failed schemes. He had been implicated in a widespread mail fraud scheme.

Mrs. Alberta French passed away in California in 1929, but to date we do not know when Charles W. French died. An article from the Los Angeles Times on August 31, 1921 stated that “Charles W. French is a financial hypnotist, wielding a strange, compelling power over a wealthy man, able to talk thousands of dollars out of a man against his own better judgment.”