Frederic Antes Godcharles

Frederic Antes Godcharles (June 3, 1872 – December 30, 1944) was a Pennsylvania politician, historian and author, who served as soldier and as director of the State Library of Pennsylvania and State Museum of Pennsylvania.

Personal life

Godcharles was born on June 3, 1872, in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, the first of five children of Elizabeth (born Burkenbine) and Charles Aiken Godcharles. His four younger siblings were Mary, Charles, Walter, and Elizabeth (the last three were born in Milton, Pennsylvania). He married Mary Walls Barber (1880–1952) in Washington, D.C., on June 15, 1904. They had no children.

He graduated from Lafayette College with an electrical engineering degree in 1893. Godcharles was an avid trap shooter and placed fourth in a professional-amateur shoot. He and his wife moved to Maryland after his term as Director of the Pennsylvania State Library and Museum, and died in Leonardtown there after a brief illness, aged 72.

Public service

Godcharles was a member of the U.S. Army in the Spanish–American War in 1898. He served in the Army again during the First World War, and rose to the rank of captain.

Godcharles was a member of the Republican Party and served in both houses of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Godcharles represented Northumberland County in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1901 and 1902, and represented Union County in the Pennsylvania State Senate from 1905 to 1908. Other sources differ as to his service in the General Assembly: his obituary in The New York Times said he served in the "General Assembly in 1900 and the Pennsylvania Senate from 1904 to 1908", while The Political Graveyard says he was a member of the "Pennsylvania state senate, 1905-08" and a member of the Pennsylvania delegation to the 1908 Republican National Convention, and the book Union County, Pennsylvania: A Celebration of History lists him as representing Union County, Pennsylvania, in the state senate from 1909 to 1912.