Gilman, Charles Lewis, 1882-1930.

Charles Lewis Gilman was a nationally recognized outdoors writer, poet, editor, outdoorsman, and firearms expert. The son of Samuel C. and Harriet Frances (Clark) Gilman, Charles was born June 22, 1882, in St. Cloud, Minnesota. He worked at the campus newspaper The Minnesota Daily while studying law at the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1905. Afterward he worked for a variety of Minneapolis-area publications, including the Minneapolis Evening Tribune, reporting on firearms and outdoors-related topics. He married musician Wilma H. Anderson in June 1907. In 1909 he became publisher-editor of The Open, a publication aimed at sportsmen of the Northwest. Suffering from health problems, he retreated to the northern woods in 1912, building a cabin on Sand Point Lake about 30 miles northeast of Orr, Minnesota. Gilman, his wife, and their daughter, Frances, and son, Clark, spent much of their time at the cabin prior to World War I. During this time his reputation as a writer grew as he wrote poems and articles on outdoors themes. His work included a column, “Forest, Stream and Target,” that first ran in The Minneapolis Daily News, then in The Minneapolis Star from 1912 to 1929 at least. He served in the army (1917-1920) with the rank of captain, winning his superiors’ praise as an instructor in machine gunnery at Camp Dodge, Iowa, and Fort Benning, Georgia. With failing mental health following the war, he spent much of his time at his northern Minnesota cabin, continuing to write for a variety of publications while also working in the Minnesota Department of Forestry. His family maintained a home in Minneapolis and came for visits with him periodically throughout the year. He died in a fire that destroyed his northern Minnesota cabin on December 10, 1930.

Wilma Hortense (Anderson) Gilman, was born July 9, 1881, in Burr Oak, Iowa, to Andrew E. and Lavina (Nichols) Anderson. In her youth, she studied piano in Brussels, Belgium, before returning to the United States to tour and perform. After marrying Charles Gilman in 1907, she made her home in Minneapolis. She became a piano and music instructor, teaching for the Minneapolis public school system, the McPhail School of Music, and the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan. She also adopted her husband’s interests, publishing articles about the outdoors in her own right. She died September 12, 1971.

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