Lieutenant Charles A. Vernon
(1840-1906)
1 February 1862

Volume 6, page 9, sitting number 6905.

[Identified as 'Charles A. Vernon, Esq.' in the Silvy daybooks, on the album page the sitter was identified as 'Lieutenant Vernon' of the '20th Foot.']

Born in Bedfordshire on 17 January 1840, Charles Albert Vernon was the son of John Edward Venables Vernon of Clontarf Castle, Dublin. Educated at the Royal Military College, he joined the 20th (The East Devonshire) Regiment of Foot as an Ensign (by purchase) on 26 June 1858. He was promoted Lieutenant (by purchase) on 25 May 1860. 

In 1863, together with his younger brother Forbes George Vernon and their friend Charles Frederick Houghton, he emigrated to British Columbia in Canada, where free grants of up to 1,440 acres were available to military settlers with at least the rank of captain. On their arrival in Canada the three men discovered that the size of the land grants had recently been reduced. Each man took up a 160-acre site near the head of Okanagan Lake, where land was cheap and cattle-ranching had begun in the nearby valley. Their original homesteads grew to become the city which now bears the name Vernon. 

His first wife was Katherine Kalamalka. The couple were presumaby married à la façon du pays since no record exists of an official marriage. This union produced two daughters. Charles Vernon next married Mary McTavish, who bore him three more children. The eldest, Albert Archibald Vernon, was born on 28 February 1880. 

He and Mary appear on the 1891 and 1901 Canadian censuses living in Victoria, BC. 

Charles Albert Vernon died at Victoria in British Columbia on 8 October 1906 and was buried in Ross Bay Cemetery.