Charles Cross, Mayor of Sandusky 1853-56

Charles Cross was born in England in 1812. In July 1830 he, along with Dr. I. B. Ward and several other families, sailed on the packet ship Hudson from Portsmouth, England to New York. Dr .Ward went on to settle in Zanesville, but Charles Cross remained in Sandusky.

On St. Patrick’s Day in 1844 Mr. Cross was on a committee which promoted celebrating the holiday according to the principles of temperance. He was very active in the Roman Catholic Church in Sandusky. In 1853, he was elected Mayor of Sandusky, and served through 1856.  He also served as councilman, city clerk, secretary of the Board of Water Works, and Justice of the Peace. In 1874 he was the magistrate for two cases involving Rush Sloane, another Sandusky Mayor.

Mr. Cross had been widowed while a young man. One son, also named Charles Cross, became a photographer in Sandusky.

His grandson, Nicholas Charles Cross, became “Brother Sulpicius” in the Xaverian Order of the Catholic Church, having started out as a catechist at Sandusky’s Holy Angels parish.

On November 18, 1889, Charles Cross, Sr. died suddenly from heart disease. His obituary in the Sandusky Daily Register stated that “it can truthfully be said that he did not rob the public nor use office to multiply fees and increase the burden of taxes.”  He was interred in St. Joseph’s Cemetery.

To read more about Charles Cross’s trip to America, see the article “An English Colony” by Hudson C. Ward in the Sandusky Daily Register of December 3, 1889, on microfilm in the Archives Research Center of the Sandusky Library, or via the Newspaper Archive online database, available through the library's website.