Charles Carl Gustave Gottlieb Robert Schulz was born June 26, 1829, in Anklam, Prussia, the oldest of thirteen children of Carl Joachim Schulz and Henrietta Frederike Geirtler.
Carl Schulz, Charles’ father, was a government pilot on the Baltic Sea. Carl wished for Charles to follow that vocation, but a seafaring life was not to his liking. Instead Charles was apprenticed to the barber’s trade in Stettin, Prussia, in 1842. After learning the trade of barbering, practicing in leading German cities, he moved to Berlin. In 1849, he headed to London where he stayed for two years, then he moved to Liverpool for one year.
In 1852 he immigrated to America, settling in New York City. He worked as a barber in New York City for three-and-a-half years and then opened his own shop for another year-and-a-half.
Charles married Eliza Jepp, a native of Hanover, Germany, in New York City in 1855 and they were the parents of five children: Bertha Amelia, who married Gustave John Murbach; Robert, Emma Magdaline, who married Henry Louis Thon; and two others who were born in Naperville and died in infancy.
In 1857 Charles moved to Chicago, but he didn’t like the appearance of the city at that time, so he moved to Naperville and opened a barber shop.
In 1859 he added tobacco and cigars to his barbering business. In 1873 he sold the barber shop side of the business to his apprentice so he could travel to surrounding counties to sell tobacco.
In December 1874, his frame building for the barber shop and cigar store was destroyed by fire and he lost $10,000. Following the fire, Charles opened another barber shop while his new two-story brick building was being built on the southeast corner of Main Street and Jefferson Avenue.
He continued in the tobacco business until 1896 when he was stricken with paralysis, from which he never recovered. The Naperville Post Office was located in his building during the 1880’s and 1890’s.
Charles was a member of Euclid Lodge No. 65, A.F. & A.M., Euclid Chapter No. 13, R.A.M., and Aurora Commandery No. 22, Knights Templar.
Charles Carl Gustave Gottlieb Robert Schulz died June 17, 1898, in Naperville, DuPage County, Illinois. Reverend Harvey Virgil Tull, minister of the First Congregational Church conducted the religious funeral services at the Schulz home and Samuel Mather, Master of Euclid Lodge, performed the simple Masonic funeral service at the grave in the Naperville Cemetery.
