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             Charles Herbert Silliman, the subject of this brief biographical sketch, is a descendant of a race of men whose independence of character and spirit of adventure and enterprise has given this government its stability and developed its vast resources. Partaking of the character of his people, Charles H. Silliman was not content until he attained the largest field for usefulness, and until he found the kind of occupation that opened before him an opportunity to become a factor in the subjugation of a vast body of productive wild lands to the furrow of the plow and the wheels of the mowing machine.

             After extensive travel, both at home and abroad, and an intelligent study of different localities, he located in Austin, Texas, and making arrangements through his wife's relatives in England, to obtain funds for investment in mortgages on Texas lands, he opened his office in Austin, and the Land and Mortgage Company he represents has for some years been lending its aid under his intelligent supervision to stocking and opening up farms in Texas.

             He is a native of New York, and was born January 30, 1852, on the shores of Lake Ontario, in Monroe county, New York. His father and mother were of sturdy New England stock. Lafayette Silliman, his father, was a relative of Professor Silliman, of Yale College, and emigrated to New York from Fairfield county, Connecticut. His mother, Caroline Porter Silliman, was a daughter of Samuel M. Porter, one of the early Waterbury manufacturers. His grandfather on the maternal side, was an officer in the war of 1812-14, and both families from which he descended were active participants in the revolutionary struggle for independence.

             When young Silliman was only twelve years of age, in 1860, his father moved to Rockport and engaged in manufacturing farming machinery, where the young man received a mechanical training in his father's shops, and good educational training at the Rockport Academy, which became one of the State normal schools in 1866.

             Mr. Silliman graduated with the honors of his class at this institution in 1869, and delivered the first graduating oration in the institution, on the subject of "Men the World Demands"; and then and there he indicated the type of American manhood, a model which he has striven to illustrate.

             In 1870 he was employed in teaching in the public schools at Albion, Michigan, and in 1871 he went to New Orleans, Louisiana, and after teaching there in the model schools, he entered a competitive examination, and won the chair of natural sciences in the boys' high school in that city.

             He spent the summers of 1872 and 1873 in Texas, and but for a spell of malarial fever, would have settled in Dallas when that city was a small town, but as he then thought, with bright possibilities.

             For the purpose of restoring his health, he went to California, and when he recovered he again engaged in teaching, and during his residence in the Golden State he held important and responsible positions in the educational institutions of the State.

             The first year he filled the chair of mathematics, in Santa Barbara College. At the close of the session he returned to New Orleans, on a mission of love, not of business, and married Miss Elizabeth A. Kirk, of that city, transplanting this fair flower of the Crescent City to the Pacific Slope. On his return to California with his bride, he located in the beautiful city of Oakland, just across the bay from San Francisco, and became an instructor in the California Military Academy, and for the next four years he was a teacher in the boys' high school of San Francisco.

             In 1881 he resigned his position in this school in order to devote himself to the practice of law. For three years while teaching he had taken the course of legal reading at Hastings College of Law, and received the degree of ILL. D., with the first graduating class of this department of the University of California.

             He located in San Diego, California, and began the practice of his profession, but his active temperament became impatient in the irksome waiting, to which every professional man has been subjected, and in answer to demands of an active disposition, he engaged in mercantile pursuits, and after one year's experience he was found so admirably adapted to business that he became the managing partner in one of the largest and most prosperous mercantile firms of that city. At the same time he was Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, and was most active in all public enterprises.

             In the fall of 1884 he sold out his mercantile interest at a considerable profit, and having acquired several thousand acres of land in Texas, while residing in California, he came back to the State to look after his lands, and the great future of Texas became so plain to him that he determined to settle in the State.

             He had visited England several times, and through his wife's relatives there he organized business connections that have supplied him with abundant means to invest in Texas farm mortgages, and today the Land Mortgage Bank, of which he is manager, is one of the most prosperous institutions of the State, and through this bank the agricultural interests of the State have been largely benefited and developed.

             Mr. Silliman belongs to a peculiar class of enterprising and adventurous men. He does not attempt to take a community by storm and flourish for a few days ostentatiously. He is quiet and unassuming and impresses his individuality upon those around him by his genuine worth and reliability. Although he had all the advantages of an early training for the ordinary affairs of life, he was too large to fit in a local groove in an old and finished country, and breaking away from his surroundings he adventured into the very heart of enterprise in a country having two inviting advantages. In the first place, its condition was undergoing a vast change in its affairs and character of thought; and in the next place, it was new and at the same time conservative. Mr. Silliman thought he would fit well in such a groove, and with tenacity of purpose and alertness he watched his opportunity, and when it ripened he was not slow to take advantage of it.

             Really he is a self-made man, nothwithstanding his educational advantages. He has had to think for himself and that thought was concerned with things far beyond the routine of an old slow town.

             He has made money from the time he entered into business in 1869, and he has never had a reverse of any nature. This is not the result of accident, but of sound judgment and fixed and fair business habits. He has never allowed a bill or draft to be taken back from his office, when presented, if it was just and due. In all his business transactions he has never violated his rule of promptness and dispatch. With him each day has its duties, and each day closes with every duty fully discharged. He never postpones anything, but attends to it at a proper time.

             He has won his way silently, but effectively, into the confidence of the people of Texas. His character is solid and built up to a high standard of strict integrity. He has traveled largely, at home and abroad, and no "pent up Utica" restricts his views. He is broad in his political and religious opinions, tolerant and personally generous to a fault. He was an active member of the Masonic fraternity on the Pacific coast, and is now (1889) Senior Warden of Lodge No. 12, A. F. & A. M. He is a member of the Lone Star Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, Colorado Commandery, Knights Templar, and of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.