Charles St. Denis

1924-1987 · New Carlisle, Quebec

Born 1924, New Carlisle, Quebec

Died 1987

Father: Alfred C. St. Denis

Mother: Lillian Dobson

Charles A. St. Denis was born on 2 May 1924 at New Carlisle, Quebec, a town on the Bay of Chaleur on the Gaspé coast. His parents were Alfred C. St. Denis and Lillian Dobson. New Carlisle was settled by Loyalists in the 1780s and kept an English-speaking population beside the French one, and the Dobson name belongs to that English side. On 1 June 1931 the family was at New Carlisle, in a house of five rooms: Alford St. Denis, 38, born in the United States of Quebec-born parents, an electric worker for the Canadian National Railways; Lilly, 33, born in Quebec; Charles, a schoolboy; and his sister Sylvia, four. The census taker wrote them down as Roman Catholic and, under race, as Irish. How and when Charles came into the United States is not yet known.

He served in the United States Army in the Second World War and left it a private first class. His war service is the one fact his headstone chose to carry.

By the late 1950s he was in Ashtabula County, Ohio, married to Rhoda Belle Hammons, a West Virginian fourteen years younger than himself. Their daughter Mildred Lee was born at Ashtabula on 28 January 1958. The family then went west: their daughter Catherine was born at Downey, in Los Angeles County, California, in 1965, and another daughter, Rhoda, at Los Angeles in 1966. They came back to Ohio, to Rome in Ashtabula County, where Mildred went to Rome High School and where Rhoda died on 5 May 1982, aged 44. Her ashes were buried on the family's own ground at Rome.

Charles died in December 1987 in Bexar County, Texas, aged 63. He was buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, section AG, site 2573, under a white government headstone that reads "CHARLES A ST DENIS, PFC, US ARMY, WORLD WAR II, MAY 2 1924, DEC 19 1987". His daughter Catherine left a message there in 2020: "Love you Dad with all my heart, Miss you way, way to much."

Parents

Alfred C. St. Denis (b. 1893)

Lillian Dobson (1897-1941)

Sources

Find a Grave memorial 3051443, PFC Charles A. St. Denis, Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, plot A G 2573; photograph by LKat, 2018.

United States Social Security Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT), 1936-2007, and United States Social Security Death Index, entries for Charles A St Denis, as indexed on FamilySearch.

Canada, Census, 1931, Quebec, household of Alford St Denis, as indexed on FamilySearch, ark 1:1:65PP-K58D.

United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Nationwide Gravesite Locator, search for St Denis, Charles, read 19 October 2026.

Obituary of Mildred Lee Morrison, Burr Funeral Home, Chardon, Ohio, August 2019, transcribed on Find a Grave memorial 213323593.

Government headstone, Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, photographed on Find a Grave memorial 3051443; Department of Veterans Affairs Nationwide Gravesite Locator entry for Charles A. St Denis; United States Social Security Death Index and the Social Security Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT), as indexed on FamilySearch; obituary of Mildred Lee Morrison, Burr Funeral Home, Chardon, Ohio, 2019, transcribed on Find a Grave memorial 213323593; California Birth Index, 1966, as indexed on FamilySearch.

If Charles St. Denis is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Charles St. Denis (1924-1987)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/charles-st-denis-1924-1987-96ef42.