Charles Wesley Pitman

Charles Wesley Pitman (ca. 1816 – June 8, 1871) was a Whig member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania and later a Republican officeholder and businessman in Schuylkill County. He was born in New Jersey around 1816, although the precise date and place of his birth are not documented in surviving records. Little is known about his family background or early youth, but his subsequent academic and professional pursuits indicate that he received a sound preparatory education before entering college.

Pitman attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, one of the leading institutions of higher learning in the state during the early nineteenth century. He graduated in 1838, a period when Dickinson was noted for training young men for the professions, public service, and the ministry. His education there would have provided him with a grounding in classical studies, rhetoric, and moral philosophy, all of which were considered essential for civic leadership in the antebellum era.

Immediately upon his graduation in 1838, Pitman moved to Pottsville, Pennsylvania, in Schuylkill County, then a growing community at the center of the anthracite coal region. In Pottsville he established and conducted a school for boys known as the Pottsville Academy. Through this work as an educator, he contributed to the intellectual and civic development of the town at a time when formal educational institutions were still relatively limited in many parts of Pennsylvania.

Pitman entered national politics as a member of the Whig Party, which drew support from professionals, merchants, and reform-minded citizens in Pennsylvania’s developing industrial and mining regions. He was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-first Congress, representing Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives. His service placed him in the national legislature during a turbulent period marked by sectional tensions and debates over the expansion of slavery, although the specific details of his committee assignments and legislative initiatives are not well documented in the surviving historical record.

After his term in Congress, Pitman did not return to the classroom but instead became engaged extensively in the lumber business. This work connected him to one of the key resource-based industries of Pennsylvania, complementing the coal and related enterprises that were transforming the economy of Schuylkill County and the surrounding region. Over time, as the Whig Party collapsed in the 1850s, Pitman later became affiliated with the emerging Republican Party, aligning himself with the new political organization that drew many former Whigs into its ranks.

In the later phase of his public career, Pitman held local office in Schuylkill County. He was elected sheriff of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, in 1870, assuming responsibility for law enforcement and the administration of the county jail at a time when the region was experiencing social and labor tensions associated with industrial growth. He served as sheriff until his death in Pottsville on June 8, 1871. Charles Wesley Pitman was interred in the Presbyterian Cemetery, leaving a record of service that spanned education, business, and public office at both the local and national levels.