Charity Rodman was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in the year 1765. Her father was a sea-captain, and died at Honduras while she was in infancy. She married Thomas Rotch, of Nantucket, Massachusetts, on the sixth of June, 1790. Soon afterwards the Rotch family removed to New Bedford, where they have since distinguished themselves by their energy and uprightness of character, and their success in the mercantile business, being extensively engaged in the whale-fishery. Of some of them, as traffickers, it may be said, as it was of the merchants of Tyre in the days of her glory: "they are among the honorable of the earth." [23] Some of the facts embodied in this article were gathered by the author while on a visit to Massillon, Ohio, in the summer of 1847, and were communicated to the public at that time through the columns of the Western Literary Messenger; others were lately and very obligingly furnished by Dr. William Bowen, of that place. About the year 1801, Mrs. Rotch removed with her husband to Hartford, Connecticut, where she remained till 1811. She then, in a feeble state of health, and for its improvement, accompanied her husband on a journey through Ohio, and other parts of the West. The mildness of the winter was favorable to her constitution, and, restored to comfortable health, she returned to Hartford in the early part of the next summer. The following November she removed to Kendol, in Stark county, Ohio, near the site of the present village of Massillon. There the mind of Mrs. Rotch, cooperating with the long-cherished wishes of her heart, originated and matured plans for the establishment of a "school for orphan and destitute children." Having traveled much, she had made extensive observations; and with an eye always open to the condition and wants of human kind, she early and often felt the force of a remark once made to her by an English friend: "That there were a great many children _wasted_ in this country"--a painful truth, but no less applicable to Great Britain than to the United States. Her husband died in 1823, and bequeathed to her, during life, his large and entire estate. His personal property was left in her hands to be disposed of as her philanthropic heart might dictate. This formed the basis of the school-fund which she left, and which, four or five years after her death, which occurred on the sixth of August, 1824, amounted to twenty thousand dollars. The interest of this sum has since purchased a farm of one hundred and eighty-five acres, one and a half miles from the village of Massillon, and erected, at a cost of five thousand dollars, a large brick edifice for educational and dwelling purposes, which has been open seven years and which sustains forty pupils. The real and personal estate of the institution, is now estimated at thirty-five thousand dollars.