Charles Lewellyn Biggs
Charles Lewellyn Biggs, member of the law firm of Bentley & Biggs in the Engineers Building, and also secretary and treasurer of The Northern Land and Improvement Company, has been an active member of the Cleveland bar for nearly ten years and has had a very wide and extended experience in business affairs, having been state manager of one of the larger insurance companies in Michigan before he qualified as a lawyer.
Mr. Biggs was born at West Newton, Pennsylvania, August 16, 1870, but spent most of his early youth in Kansas. His parents, Andrew Wesley and Mary F. (Gressley) Biggs, have for forty-six years lived on one farm near Bentley, Kansas. Both parents were born at West Newton, Pennsylvania, and all their children except the two youngest were born in the same locality. The father and mother married about sixty years ago and they long since celebrated their golden wedding anniversary at their county home in Kansas. Andrew W. Biggs had a notable record as a Union soldier. He enlisted at the beginning of the war and served until the close with the Thirty-sixth Pennsylvania Infantry. He was three times wounded, receiving wounds at the battle of Antietam and the battle of Gettysburg. At Gettysburg he was shot in the side and the ball which was extracted after the war is now in the possession of his son, Charles. He was in the three days' fighting at Gettysburg and among other notable engagements were those of Spottsylvania Court House, Battle of Bull Run and Chancelorsville. He has voted the same way that he fought during the war and has been honored with township offices in his home community of Kansas. Both he and his wife were reared as Methodists, but there being no church of that denomination near their Kansas home they have worshiped (sic) in the United Brethren Church. The father for the past forty years has been superintendent of its Sunday school. The father was also a member of the Farmers' Alliance Movement of Kansas. Both parents are rugged sturdy people and they have not only lived honorably and usefully themselves but have impressed their enviable character upon the lives of their children. The children were eight in number, five sons and three daughters. All except one son grew up and all but one of the daughters are still living. The family record in brief is as follows: Alvin H., who went to the Klondike about the time that gold was discovered in the northwest country and is still a successful miner there; Emma, who died in 1914, leaving four children by her marriage to John Myers; James, who was accidentally killed at the age of five years; Edward A., and attorney in Chicago; William S., living with his parents at Bentley, Kansas; Charles L.; Elizabeth, Mrs. Robert T. Trego of Sedgwick, Kansas; and Sarah Jane, Mrs. William Folk of Bentley, Kansas.
Charles L. Biggs received most of his early education in Fort Scott, Kansas. In early manhood he went to Chicago, and soon took up the manufacture of bicycles at a time when they were in the high tide of their popularity. He was a bicycle manufacturer for seven years and organized The Englewood Bicycle and Electrical Company of which he was president. In 1899 Mr. Biggs was appointed state manager for Michigan of The North American Insurance Company of Chicago, and continued to fill that position until 1905 when he resigned.
In the meantime while traveling about Michigan he studied law during leisure time and on leaving the insurance business he entered the Cleveland Law School of Baldwin-Wallace University and was graduated LL. B. in 1908 He was admitted to the Ohio bar the same year and also to practice in the United States District Court., being sworn in by the late Judge Taylor.
Beginning practice in Cleveland in 1908, Mr. Biggs was associated with the firm of Biggs & Staiger. In the latter part of 1910 Judge Charles S. Bentley came in to the firm, which is now known as Bentley & Biggs.
Mr. Biggs is manager of the northern district of Ohio for the knights of the Maccabees. He is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, being affiliated with Woodward Lodge, Mount Olive Chapter, Royal Arch Masons; Holyrood Commandery, Knights Templar; Lake Erie Consistory, Al Koran Temple of the Mystic Shrine and Al Sirat Grotto. He also belongs to the National Lodge of the Knights of Pythias, to the North American Union of Chicago, and the American Insurance Union of Columbus, to the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, the Civic League of Cleveland and Cleveland and Ohio State Bar Associations.
Mr. Biggs resides at 2804 East Overlook road. May 9, 1899, at Chicago he married Miss May Blanche Fletcher. Mrs. Biggs was born and educated in Chicago, being a graduate of one of the Chicago high schools.
From Cleveland - Special Limited Edition, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago & New York, 1918 v.1