author
Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
1810–1905
Best remembered for founding St. Louis's Home of the Friendless in 1853, she combined practical compassion with a writer's eye for character and memory. Her work as an author and philanthropist left a record of both family history and public service.
1 Audiobook
A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren
by Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
About the author
Born in 1810, Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless became known in St. Louis for founding the Home of the Friendless, created to care for elderly women who could no longer support themselves. That institution later became known as the Charless Home, and it remained the achievement most closely tied to her name.
She was also a writer. In 1869 she published A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless, in a Series of Letters to His Grandchildren, preserving family history in a personal, readable form. Her writing gives her a place not only in local civic history but also among 19th-century American women authors.
After the death of her husband, Joseph Charless Jr., she later lived in New Orleans, where she died in 1905. Even in brief accounts of her life, she stands out as someone who turned private grief and family memory into lasting public work.