Charles Cole Hine was born in New Haven, Conn., December 21, 1825. When six years of age his parents removed to Hornellsville, N. Y. His father was a carriage builder, but of nomadic tendencies, and the boy had small opportunity for schooling, though as a matter of fact he went to school all his life; he had an instinct for acquiring knowledge that could not be suppressed, and as a result those who knew him best in after life took it for granted that he was a college-bred man. With the versatility of many another self-made man he turned his hand to many things in his youth while finding himself. He once went on a concert tour with three other young men, driving from town to town through Ohio and western Pennsylvania. At one time he turned to art for a living and actually did support himself, after a fashion, for a brief period, painting portraits. Mr. Hine’s father moved to Massillon, Ohio, in 1837, and there the boy grew up and cast his first vote. Once when clerking in a store in Massillon, among the commodities of which was a line of books, the proprietor, who was of a kindly disposition, allowed the young man to read as he liked, and as a result he read every book in the place, including an encyclopædia, some six hundred volumes in all. When the telegraph was young he became interested in that and established lines through parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, contracting for poles and their erection, selecting the local operators and teaching them the Morse alphabet, and doing any other missionary work that was needed. That he was something more in this than ordinary is evidenced by the fact that in Reid’s “History of the Telegraph in America” Mr. Hine’s name is frequently mentioned, and always in complimentary terms. While in charge of the office in Louisville, he invented a transmitter to repeat messages in order to save the time of an operator, for in those days the electric fluid only carried a message so far, and long distance messages must needs be repeated by hand. Later some one invented and patented the same thing and made, I believe, a fortune by it. An operator in the early days of telegraphy was a more important personage than at present. Mr. Hine has told how, when he was stationed in St. Louis, 1848-9, P. T. Barnum was taking Jenny Lind around the country and, upon reaching St. Louis, he insisted on getting inside the telegraph office and making the acquaintance of the operator. As a result he took Mr. Hine riding with him and gave him two tickets for each concert, no mean gift when tickets were selling at $20.00 each.