Jefferson County Online A part of the IAGenWeb and USGenWeb Projects Who's Who in 1921 & 1922 Charles H. Linder

"The Fairfield Tribune"
Friday, February 25, 1921
Page SIX

NO. 2 (sic - should be 4)

CHARLES HOPKINS LINDER

That these sketches of the lives of our great and near-great men in this county may be historically correct, the Tribune makes every effort to learn the whole truch about the subjects of the sketches. Publishing half-truths is not making history, so the Tribune publishes all the truth.

Every precaution is taken to guard against being misinformed. Some men have enemies who are mean enough to tell lies about them and try to get them published as truths. There have been known cases where even a man's close blood relatives will say mean things; even a brother has been known to do such things. The Tribune does not believe that Charley Linder has a brother who would so far forget his blood ties as to lie about Charley, however.

But even the oldest of Charley's friends cannot recall any instance of him riding in a box car. Yet there are things that happen in the life of a bank cashier that are not known to the public--things that oftentimes are not known to any but a brother or two. The Tribune presents only what is vouched for as the truth by seemingly responsible parties. And the Who's Who editor will add that a man who will lie about his own brother is a scalawag.

With these few remarks we will proceed to the business of introducing to your kindly attention our hero, Charles Hopkins Linder, cashier of the Linby Savings bank. The introduction is made merely for the benefit of those Tribune readers who live in distant states, for Charley Linder is well and somewhat favorably known to everyone in these parts.

Charles Hopkins Linder was born in Virginia and came to this county at the age of----but stop! We had for a moment forgotten this was not an obituary of Charles Hopkins. Obituaries frequently lie, but this department is a truthful one. And anyway, Charles Hopkins is anything but a dead one.

As we started to say, Charles Hopkins Linder was among the Virginia colonists who came out here and put Abingdon and some other towns on the map. When he came to this wild region he found the natives a very ignorant lot. He saw that before they could be enabled to make any money they would have to be educated. And Charles Hopkins wanted them to make money so they could spend it in a store he proposed to open a little later. So after he'd been here a while he taught school. It was rather a far-fetched bit of reasoning--this thing of educating people first so they could make money to spend with him--but Charley always was a rather forward-looking chap.

After he'd got the folks around his parts pretty well educated he and a few friends decided they'd go down to Oklahoma and pick up one or two of the easy farms that were lying about. He was a bit shy on funds, but he had plenty of hound dogs and a lot of nerve. So Charley bundled up his worldly possessions in an old bandana, got a leading string attached to his hounds and made the trip, according to our best information, in what is slangily termed a "side-door sleeper." He was thus enabled to enjoy the passing scenery at will, had plenty or room (sic) and all the fresh air he wanted.

Charley didn't stay long in Oklahoma. He believed the people back in Abingdon and around there had accumulated enought money by now to make it worth while for him to come back. So he came to Abingdon and worked in a general store for a time, then went to Libertyville and opened a store with Lee Gobble.

But Charles Hopkins always had a hankering to be around where the big money was. So he came to Fairfield and went to work as deputy in the county treasurer's office. Plenty of money there all right, but Charles Hopkins soon realized that he would never get a very big piece of it serving as deputy.

"I'll start a bank--there's always plenty of money in banks," opined Charles Hopkins.

And organize a bank he did--down at Libertyville . The Libertyville bank proved a success but Charley Linder had an eye on the fertile fields up in the northwest part of the county. It looked like the real money was there. With his persuasive tongue it wasn't any trick at all to convince some of the monied men about Linby that the town needed a bank--and it was as easy as falling off a log for Charley to convince them that he would make the best cashier the bank could possibly have.

This all happened more than a dozen years ago, and the people are more convinced than ever that Charles Hopkins is the best cashier they could get . Charles Hopkins Linder appears to be a fixture in a fixed institution, which is not by way of saying that he could be "fixed" in the political sense of the word. People of his neighborhood know there is such thing as "fixing" Charley--he's a democrat.

This narrative, being absolutely truthful, must hasten to state that Charley Linder had other than mercenary motives in opening the Linby bank. He regards the bank as a benefaction to the community; what's more, the people there agree with him . On the whole, Charles Hopkins Linder is by way of being a pretty valuable citizen to his community and is doing a real benefit to the people of Linby and vicinity. And if he has some relatives who are so jealous of him as to charge him with traveling economically down to Oklahoma--well, that's Charles Hopkins' business.