Charles Q. Eldredge: The Historical Peacock

Historical eccentric Charles Q. Eldredge is well remembered for his private museum on River Road in Mystic filled with thousands of displayed curios.  Eldredge was perceived as one of the most colorful Mystic characters, and in his memoirs he said that as a young boy, he fell from an ox cart and hit his head on a stone. 

"Some have said this fall affected my brain,” he wrote.

Eldredge was the youngest of eight children, all without middle names.  As a school boy, he openly fabricated his middle initial to an unlikable and strict teacher.  This caused a calamity of humor among the students and earned him the nickname "Charlie Q”.  The "Q" stuck and eventually became part of his legal name. 

Eldredge seemed to enjoy growing up in Old Mystic.  He wrote of the village as lively with hundreds of people, and he sang the praises of the Baptist pipe-organ.   He found employment in his early teenage years, including farming for 8 cents a day, pounding bark, and joining a gang of road workers. 

In 1862, he was offered a contract laboring for a timber operation in Wisconsin, and he convinced his parents to let him go.  It was in Wisconsin that his personal transformation began. He developed a rugged work ethic, gained responsibility and elevated his income.  He endured physical challenges which he claimed were the most trying of his life.

On the job, a lumber man fell into a river and was swept under the logging crib by a  steady current.  Eldredge jumped into the torrent and emerged with the survivor, forever in his debt. 

When his contract was up, he returned to Mystic for short time, then pursued opportunities in Hoosick Falls, New York, where he became a multifaceted business man and one of the largest tax payers in the town.  Eldredge built and operated a woodworking factory, a grist mill, a machine shop and a knit goods factory. He helped construct more than 200 buildings during his 20 years in Hoosick Falls.

Married in 1873, his wife Jennie Waitstill Leavens died 12 years later from Typhoid fever.  He then married his second wife, Maude Estelle Gilpatric, and in 1893 they moved the west side of the Mystic River.  In 1904, their 18-year-old son committed suicide, which prompted a personal trip for Eldredge to remote parts of Jamaica and the West Indies.  He returned with many unique souvenirs.

In 1912, Eldredge built a house on River Road in Mystic on the property in which he grew up.  This is where he and his wife would live out their remaining days.  The house was equipped with fireplaces which burned four-and-a-half-foot logs.  Eldredge installed 78 electric lights throughout the house for ease and convenience.  One hundred thirty eight pictures hung in the third floor art gallery. His workshop was fully stocked with equipment and machinery to build any project of his choosing.

At age 72, he built a small private museum containing over three hundred curios and souvenirs, which eventually grew to several thousand.  Opened in 1917, the spot became a wildly popular destination and over 500 visitors counted in a 12-month period. 

Exhibit items included a four foot bronzed cucumber, a lightning struck flag pole, Harriett Beecher Stowe’s handbag, a 125-foot skeleton of a whale, Thomas Edison’s first incandescent light and a Fort Sumter cannon ball. 

The homestead is still standing but the museum has since been demolished. Everything was auctioned off after Eldredge's death in 1937, but his memory as a character still brings a smile to the faces of those who knew the gifts this colorful man brought to Mystic.