Charles Pelham (congressman)

Charles Pelham (March 12, 1835 – January 18, 1908) was an American lawyer, politician, and Confederate Civil War veteran who served one term as a U.S. congressional representative from Alabama from 1873 to 1875.

Biography
Pelham was born in Person County, North Carolina. Pelham moved with his parents to Alabama in 1838, where his brother John Pelham was born. There, Charles Pelham attended the common schools and later studied law.

Legal career
In 1858, he was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Talladega, Alabama.

Civil War
After the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, Pelham entered the Confederate army in 1862 and served as first lieutenant of Company C, Fifty-first Regiment, Alabama Infantry.

Judge
After the war, he served as judge of the tenth judicial circuit of Alabama from 1868 until 1873.

Congress
Pelham was elected as a Republican to the Forty-third Congress (March 4, 1873 – March 3, 1875).

Later career
When he was not renominated in 1874, Pelham resumed the practice of law in Washington, D.C. Late in life, he was appointed a clerk in the Treasury Department.

Death
In 1907, he moved to Poulan, Georgia, where he died the following year on January 18, 1908. He was interred in the Presbyterian Cemetery.