Sideroads: Charming Charley Ripley

Charles Henry Ripley, 1866

The clan of William Young Ripley was not only tight-knit, but incredibly interesting from a historical perspective. Two were Generals in the Civil War, two were lost at sea (different seas, different years), one would marry and her daughter would marry a General, and one was the adoptive mother of the first woman Chiropractor in Vermont (License #1, issued in 1909). I could go on about the rest of the twigs and branches of this family tree, and hope to share a few of the more interesting.

Charles Henry Ripley was the youngest son of William Young Ripley of Rutland, Vermont and his second wife, Jane Betsey Warren - learn more here

In summary from"With Pen or Sword: Lives and times of the remarkable Rutland Ripleys," by Robert G Steele:

He was a poor student. He was still in school when the war broke out, and was with difficulty restrained by the family from immediately following his brothers into the service. When in the second year of the war, Mr Lincoln issued his call for additional volunteers, the spirited youngster could no longer be kept on a leash. Unlike his brothers, he cared nothing for officer status and the implications of responsibility it carried. Charley signed up for nine months as a private soldier. His first act on receiving his enlistment bounty was to come home and pay, as far as the money went, the debts he had managed to run up in two years of idleness. This gesture prompted his brother William to express the pious hope he would return safely after his service, "free from bad habits."

In October, 1862, not long after William's  return from the battlefields, the younger brother went off to join his regiment, the Twelfth Vermont Infantry. His sister Agnes came home from school to see him off. If Charley Ripley's army career is remarkable for anything, it is for the fact that it did not include any fighting whatsoever. On the way south he had time to do some sightseeing in Washington before his unit was ordered into camp across the river in Virginia. There he was assigned to guard and picket duty at various locations, and to work on the construction of barracks and shelters for troops. In his letters home, his main concerns were getting food sent to him and to keep awake on guard duty, in that order. From Wolf Run Shoals he wrote his sister Mary, "Please send me ten or twleve pounds of butter (put up in a sound wooden box), fifteen or twenty pounds of good strong cheese, two or three gallons of thick maple syrup, a few (say at least a half dozen) mince pies, a few sweet pickled cucumbers or citron or anything else you can get without any trouble. You may think that I have sent for a good deal, but even that amount will not last long down here. The rest of the boys get more boxes from home than I do, and we always share. Button has had as much as 20 pounds of butter and forty pounds of cheese."

Tiring of guard duty, Charley dreamed of the luxury of being an officer, or even a noncom. Edward,  himself a paroled war prisoner at the time, saw a sergeancy opening up in his own regiment and tried vainly to have Charley transferred. 

At the end of his enlistment, he came back home and was mustered out of service 14 Jul 1863. He had earned corporal's chevrons.

Perhaps here is the place to record that for Charley Ripley, the pursuit of happiness was often enhanced by the imbibing of alcoholic spirits Despite the total abstention of their parents, all three of the Ripley boys drank on occasion, but only Charley had difficulty putting on the brakes. 

Charley worked briefly int he office of the marble works, but his heart was not in it. For all his waywardness, Charley was endowed with a special kind of innocent charm which not only attracted strangers to him but also roused the protective instincts of his siblings.
Since no job suited him in Rutland, his parents invented one hoping to keep his adventurous spirit and incurable wanderlust in check. They sent him off to the Wild West of his dreams for the ostensible purpose of investigating the mining possibilities in the Montana territory. In the Spring of 1866, with is mother's bible in is pocket, and gold coins in his moneybelt, with promises to be good, to stay sober and tent strictly to business, Charley Ripley left on his long trip, eager for any adventure.

The story of his trip west can be read starting on page 288 of Pen and Sword. After many months, he returned when his money and credit ran low.

In 1870, he, with his mother's blessing headed West to The Colorado Territory with Henry Strong as his assistant and John Gilliland. He purchased 40 acres of virgin land Las Animas. The ranch took shape over many months. It was hard going and he had to rely on his brothers for financial assistance and for improvements to the ranch. By 1877, he was able to ship steers to market in Kansas City because the trains had arrived. But in 1878 and 1879 Charley experienced a series of losses that would devastate him both emotionally and financially. His days as rancher were coming to an end. He returned to Rutland to determine what would be next.

Eight Modern Views of Famous Places in Tokyo of Great Japan (Dai Nippon Tokyo kaika meisho hakkei no zu), 1875

He boarded a tramp steamer referred to as "Kate" bound for New York with a cargo for Yokohama, Japan.  He was its sole passenger. It made its way around Cape Horn and across the oceans. He arrive in the land of the Empire of the Rising Sun in the spring of 1879 and fell in love. Tokyo had a small colony of Americans and Europeans. He took up residence in a hotel that many of them stayed in. From his home base in Tokyo, but without the slightest intention of keeping to the limits of the cities to which he was restricted by law, Charley set out to explore the interior. Dressed in native garb, he climbed mountains, swam in the lakes, sought out the byways, wandering at will throughout the land. Enemies by edict became his friends by the simple applciation of the Golden Rule. He quickly adapted to the customs of the country and observed all the taboos, thus was welcome everywhere. 

After two years there, he tired of staying in hotels. The income left to him by his father was more than $3,000 per year, and the exchange rate between the dollar and yen was sharply in his favor. He was able to rent a house in Toyko for $9 per month and that he could run it with a man cook and his wife as housekeeper for $9 more. He lived at 33 Tsukji where he lived for the remainder of his life.

He also traveled to neighboring lands like the interior of China, Hong Kong and to Siam and Cambodia and wrote letters back about his travels and adventures, also published in Pen and Sword.

After six years in the Orient Charley planned a return visit to Rutland. He brought gifts and photographs and spent many months visiting old friends and haunts. In the fall of 1886, he said his last farewells to the family and returned contentedly to his adopted country, his faithful servants, his tatami mats, his futon, and his Kiku San (whose duty was to play the samisen).

"A local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhoudn, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water tank," This description by Joseph Conrad, in his most famous novel, of the fictional Patna, could as well be applied to the actual Lorne as she lay at anchor alongside the Saigon jetty in November, 1887. The ship's officers were English, the crew polyglot, and for the Patna's Moslem pilgrims, substitute Chinese workers returning to their homeland.

It was typical of Charley Ripley, returning from yet another expedition in India and Siam, to scorn the ease of the regular passenger steamers and take passage on this creaky rust-bucket. Except for the officers, he was the only white man aboard. Cargo loaded at last, the ancient vessel crept slowly out of Saigon harbor. November 29th found her clanking and wheezing as she plowed through the placid South China Sea towards Hong Kong.

Six days later, at midnight, off the coast of Hainan, the Lorne struck an uncharted rock and immediately began to fill. There was instant pandemonium aboard as passengers and crew became panic-stricken and unmanageable. In the efforts to get the lifeboats lowered several were swamped or damaged. Charley worked valiantly and unceasingly with the crew to get the boats filled and free, after which the tackle was cut and they pulled for shore. At the end only five ship's officers and Charley remained on board the sinking ship. The six survivors clung to the keel of the remaining overturned boat, but clung to it in order to remain afloat.

As daylight came, the weakened men dropped off one by one. Charley hung on for more than ten hours, and then slipped away. Only one survived to tell the tale-he had held on for 30 hours.