Charles Noel Edge

Charles Noel Edge was born in Birmingham on 31st December 1881 to Hall Travers Edge, who later became the senior partner at Edge Ellison solicitors in Birmingham, and his first wife Jane Barrows.

Charles attended Clifton College in Bristol and then took first class honours in his Mechanical Engineering Tripos at Caius College, Cambridge. After graduating he worked for the Pennsylvania Steel Company from 1903 to 1905.

He was to travel a great deal with his work and in 1907 crossed the Atlantic to New York on the Lusitania. In 1908 he obtained Associate status from the Institution of Civil Engineers in London and, at that time, was working for Post and McCord in New York.

In 1909 he met and married Rosalie Barrow, an American socialite, while working in Yokohama. They continued to travel around Asia with his work until settling in New York. By 1915 Charles was living with his wife and two children on East 69th Street.

It appears that the marriage was not successful, and Charles left Rosalie for another woman in 1921. Charles was a stockbroker on the New York Exchange for 30 years, moving from the Upper East Side to live in upstate Westchester. He died in 1944 and, in 1949, his cremated remains were moved to lie with his father and brother in the Catacombs at Key Hill Cemetery.

Rosalie Edge, from whom he had never divorced, died in 1962. She had become a nationally acclaimed suffragist and environmental activist in the USA. She established the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania and played key roles in the establishment of two National Parks and the expansion of Yosemite National Park.

Lindsay W