CHARLES CITY

city, seat (1854) of Floyd county, northern Iowa, U.S., on the Cedar River, 29 mi (47 km) east-southeast of Mason City. Settled in 1850 by Joseph Kelly, from Monroe, Wis., who named it for his son, it was called Charlestown and St. Charles before receiving its present name. The McGregor and Western Railroad arrived in 1869. In 1901 Charles Hart and Charles Parr produced there one of the first gasoline traction engines for agricultural and industrial use. The city is a railroad junction and a trade centre with manufacturing and agricultural-based industries. Near Nashua, 10 mi southeast, is the Little Brown Church in the Vale where many couples come each year to wed; it was made famous (1857) by William Savage Pitts in his song The Church in the Wildwood. Inc. 1869. Pop. (1990) 7,878. county, eastern Virginia, U.S., occupying an area of 204 sq mi (528 sq km) in the Tidewater region, southeast of Richmond, between the Chickahominy and James rivers which unite at its southeastern border. One of Virginia's eight original shires, it was formed in 1634 and named for Charles City at Bermuda Hundred (Chesterfield County). It has some of Virginia's oldest and most historic plantations, notably Berkeley, Westover, Greenway, and Shirley. At Berkeley or Harrison's Landing, where some claim the first Thanksgiving was observed on Dec. 4, 1619, is the ancestral home of Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and of two U.S. presidentsWilliam Henry Harrison (9th) and Benjamin Harrison (23rd). During the Civil War, Berkeley was headquarters (1862) of Union General McClelland, and while quartered there Maj. Gen. Daniel Butterfield composed the bugle call Taps. The county courthouse (1730) is in the hamlet of Charles City (the county seat), and Greenway, immediately to the west, is the birthplace (1790) of John Tyler, 10th president of the U.S. At Shirley, Ann Hill Carter, mother of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, was born and there she married Light-Horse Harry Lee. The county is tied to Richmond economically, and truck, dairy, and poultry farming are the main pursuits. Pop. (1990) 6,282.