Heath, Charles A. (Charles Andrews)

Chicago businessman, founder and president of Continental Seed Co.

Charles Andrews Heath was born December 24, 1860, in Curtisville (now Interlaken), a village in the town of Stockbridge, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. His parents were Theodore Selden Heath, a clockmaker, and Mary Eveline Slocum Heath. Charles Andrews Heath attended Williams College, graduating in 1882, and around this time met and married Jennie June Greene. The Heaths left Massachusetts shortly after for Chicago, where Charles Andrews Heath went to work for the Dickinson Seed Company. He later founded his own business, the Continental Seed Company, after 37 years with Dickinson. Charles Andrews and Jennie Heath had two children: Albert Greene, born 1888, and Alice, born 1892. Alice Heath married Harold Frank and the couple had one child, Gloria, born in 1926. Beginning in 1880, Charles Andrews Heath kept diaries until 1949, just after his 90th birthday. After his wife Jennie died in 1925, Heath continued to work and provide financial support for his children and their families. Charles Andrews Heath died in 1959, a few months short of his 100th birthday.