LIGHTER, Charles E.

LIGHTER, GETZENGANNER, TOFFLAMIRE

Posted By: Jennifer Gunderson (email)
Date: 3/13/2021 at 17:23:18

Charles E. Lighter, an employe of the C. M. & St. P. Railroad for nearly thirty years and since 1886 a locomotive engineer, has been a resident of Mason City, Iowa, nearly all this time. He was born near Marietta, Ohio, in 1860, son of Henry and Elizabeth (Getzenganner) Lighter, and traces his ancestry on the paternal side to Germany and on the maternal side to Switzerland. Henry Lighter went from Maryland to Ohio, later to Illinois and finally
to Kansas, where he died in the summer of 1885. By occupation he was a farmer. His widow died in Chicago in 1908. They were faithful members of the German Lutheran church, in which faith they reared their family, and of their eleven children three sons are now living.

At the time the Lighter family left Ohio and moved to Illinois, Charles E. was five years of age. He grew to manhood on a farm near Champaign, Illinois, where he received a fair education, and when he started out on his own responsibility he engaged in railroading, which he has since followed.

On March 4, 1885, Mr. Lighter married Miss Nellie H. Tofflamire, a native of Illinois and of German descent, her parents having been early settlers and farmers of Boone county, Illinois. While not a member of any church Mrs. Lighter attends worship at the Presbyterian church. Politically Mr. Lighter is a Republican, well posted on party affairs and always at the polls to cast his franchise on election day, but never active in politics. He has long been a member of the B. of L. E. at Mason City, and for fifteen years local committeeman.

Source: History of Cerro Gordo County, Iowa. Transcribed by Jennifer Gunderson (Mar 2021)