CHARLES J. BOSWELL, M. D. In Dr. Charles J. Boswell, the city of Mounds has a citizen in whom she may well take pride. It is but rarely that a professional man is willing to spare the time or energy which any but the most perfunctory public service demands, but Dr. Boswell is one of those unusual personages whose civic pride is great enough to make it possible for him to find time for every public duty, however exacting it may prove, and in the years of his residence in Mounds his services for the general good of the community would be hard indeed to estimate.
Born in Union county, Illinois, he is the son of John H. Boswell, a retired farmer of Anna, Illinois, who was born in 1838, also in Union county. The Boswell family was established in Illinois in a very early day by Captain Thomas Boswell, grandfather of our subject, who came to Illinois from North Carolina. He passed the remainder of his life in Union county as a successful farmer, and died in 1884, at the advanced age of seventy-three years.
John H. Boswell, father of our subject, was educated in the schools of Union county and in Shurtleff College, Alton, Illinois. He was a member of Company E, One Hundred and Ninth Illinois Infantry, of which his father was captain, and with his regiment did valiant duty in the Civil war. In 1861 he was married in Washington county, Missouri, to Miss Lucy A. Major, a daughter of James M. Major, who was a farmer, originally from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where Mrs. Boswell was born in 1839. She and her husband are the parents of two surviving children, Charles J. and John E. Boswell.
Both sons received especially careful home training, and were given every advantage possible in the way of schooling. They passed through the schools of their county, after which Charles J., of whom we write, entered the Southern Normal University at Carbondale, where he completed two years work. He then took up the study of medicine in Marion Sims Medical College, St. Louis, when he was but sixteen years of age, and in 1895, after three years of close and careful application to his studies, was graduated from that institution when nineteen years old, doubtless the youngest practicing physician then of record. He soon became a strong factor in his profession, winning for himself in his locality an enviable reputation for skill and knowledge. Following his permanent establishment at Mounds, Illinois, he took two post graduate courses in the New York Polyclinic. He is a member of the Pulaski County Medical Society, The Southern Illinois Medical Society and the Illinois State Medical and American Medical Associations. He is district surgeon for the Illinois Central Railroad Company in Mounds, and is a member of the American Association of Railway Surgeons. He also had the distinction of being appointed to the state board of health by Governor Deneen on July 14, 1908.
Not only has Dr. Boswell made a name for himself in the practice of his profession, but he has become a leader in political and business affairs of his district. He has been mayor of Mounds, and during his tenure of office numerous reforms were inaugurated for the betterment of the civic welfare. He has been president of the Mounds board of health, and as a member of the county central committee has done especially effective work in the interests of the Republican party, whose adherent he is. He was named president of the First State Bank of Mounds upon its organization, and is also one of its directors, in addition to which he is a director of the Mounds Building and Loan Association. In short, there is scarcely an industry or organization of note in Mounds which has not felt the influence of Dr. Boswell at one time or another since he became connected with that city.
Fraternally he is a Master Mason, being affiliated with Trinity lodge, No. 562, and belongs to Cairo Chapter No. 71, at Cairo, Illinois, as well as to Cairo Commandery, No. 13, at Cairo. Thus far in his busy career Dr. Boswell has not married.
Extracted from A History of Southern Illinois, 1912, Volume 2, page 911-912
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