History

Charles Chapman was born in Proctorsville, Vermont in 1864.  He left school at the age of sixteen and worked with a retail-clothing dealer.  After one year, he worked as a wholesale dry goods dealer.  While in his early twenties, Charles and his parents moved to Detroit.  There, he got a job with a wholesale dry goods dealer, Edson, Moore & Company.  Soon after, Charles married a woman named Minnie and started a family.  After ten years, Charles left the company and in 1891, he began work helping to establish the Western Knitting Mills.  The mill, twenty-six miles from Detroit or a forty-five minute trip by train, was called a "splendid plant." 

Along with his brother William, Charles helped Charles Yawkey reorganize the woolen mill located on East Street.  Charles became vice president and William became treasurer.  The Western Knitting Mills, along with other mills throughout the village, was important in the economic growth of the community.  The millpond, used to power the mill, was named Chapman Lake (or Pond).  A few years later, Yawkey sold his interest to Charles.  It was not long before Chapman moved to Rochester.  While their home was being constructed, the family took rooms at C.A. Burr's and meals at the Hotel St. James.

In 1898, Charles and his family moved into their new twenty-seven acre estate, "Oak Bluff."  The home, built by renowned Detroit architect Albert Kahn, was located on the north side of Main Street, just south of Romeo Road.  Kahn designed other mansions but was best known as an architect for factories, designing for Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler.  The house was built in the Victorian style known as "shingle."  The indoor plumbing alone cost $3,000, a large sum at the time.  According to Charles Chapman's son Frank, their stone house was constructed from boulders taken from the John C. Day farm.  His parents also loved to host house socials, as he remarked, "I remember my parents lining the trees with Japanese lanterns when they had strawberry socials.  They also had indoor musical socials."   

Charles lived at Oak Bluff until his death at the young age of forty-eight in 1912.  His friends and family attributed his poor health to over-working and devotion to business.  Besides the Western Knitting Mills, he was vice president of the First National Bank of Rochester and also had a large holding in a lumber company in Wisconsin.  He was sent to the state hospital in Pontiac to regain his health but while there, he died tragically by choking on a piece of bread.  Charles Chapman was buried in the Chapman family plot in Vermont.  His daughter Doris Chapman Blackwood lived in the house until the 1960s.  The home was torn down in 1968 and became a Denny's restaurant.  Today, condominiums occupy the site.