Almost 15 years before the Civil War, when he was 17 years old, Charles Hosmer Morse, Sr., went to work for Erastus and Thaddeus Fairbanks. His pay was fifty dollars a year – not very much for a grown boy even in 1850. That was in Vermont, far from the scene of Middle West industrial activity.

Seven years later the then 24-year-old young man who became the first president of Beloit’s largest industry, had learned the Fairbanks scale business, and he became the first agent for the Fairbanks concern in Chicago. He saw the “west” for the first time. There were unlimited openings for him in a vast industrial field.

He enlarged the scope of his agency when he established a second office in Cincinnati in 1865. In 1871 when Chicago was destroyed by fire, he reorganized his business there and added his own name. His agency became Fairbanks, Morse & Company.

There was great industrial expansion after the Civil War. He sold machines made by the Eclipse Windmill Engine Company. He acquired 50 shares in that company and Fairbanks, Morse & Company became its general agent.

In 1890 he purchased the controlling interest of W.H. Wheeler, and three years later, by consolidation, reorganization and purchase, he gained ownership of the several buildings. New products were added. Fairbanks, Morse & Company became a great manufacturing firm, and after Charles Hosmer Morse retired in 1915, it continued to grow and flourish.

Charles died in 1921, when he was 88 years old.