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	Kennebec Journal Augusta, Maine August 3, 1866 An Accomplished Artisan He that thoroughly understands his trade or profession, provided it is beneficial to the public, who earnestly seeks to excel in whatever is committed to his charge, holds a position of honor and deserves the esteem and patronage of the community to whose interests his skill and labors are devoted. Architectural advance in Maine has been marked for the last few years and the improvement of the manner of beautifying the interior of public buildings and dwelling houses has been considerable. Fresco painting had come into little use until a very recent date. Not until Mr. C. J. Schumacher took up his residence in Portland and began to furnish specimens of his work in churches, halls and parlors, had this method of giving beauty to the work of the architect and the building got fairly established in Maine. A German by birth and training, he had some years of service in New York after he arrived in the United States and before he took up his residence in Maine. In Portland, Lewiston, and Waterville are numerous results of his taste and skill. In this city he has painted two churches, two halls, and several rooms in private dwellings, which are fine illustrations of what the brush will do in accomplished hands. As a whole the Orthodox church is admitted to be the finest in the State and none can visit it without greatly admiring the chaste and beautiful fresco designs of Mr. Schumacher. To those engaged in building public edifices and in adorning library-rooms and parlors we most cheerfully commend this artist as a gentleman and a man of business. Eastern Argus Portland, Maine July 26, 1890 Charles J. Schumacher A dispatch was received in this city yesterday bringing intelligence of the death of Mr. Charles J. Schumacher of Boston for many years a resident of Portland and well known for many years in this section. Mr. Schumacher was the pioneer in the art of fresco painting in Maine and during a period extending over twenty years a large number of churches, halls and private residences bore evidence of his skill and rare taste as an artist. At one time he had a large art and picture framing store on Congress street in connection with his brother C. R. F. About a dozen years ago he removed to Boston and continued the frescoing business in that section, he having a near relative there largely engaged in the same line. Mr. Schumacher was drowned on the Charles river on Thursday. He left home Wednesday evening in the best of spirits but did not say where he was going and none of the family asked him. The body was found Thursday in the river not three minutes after he fell into the water, but all efforts at restoration were unavailing. A description of the body was given in the Boston papers and Mr. Schumacher’s son recognized a similarity and went over to the undertaker’s and identified the body. Mr. Schumacher was fond of boating and was frequently on the water. He was an expert swimmer and his family was confident that he must have experienced some sudden shock, mental or physical, which threw him from the boat. A widow, a sister of the well known chemist, A. G. Schlotterbeck, and seven children, four daughters and three sons, are left to mourn a kind husband and indulgent father. Two brothers, Gustav W. and Christian R. F., residents of this city, also survive him. The funeral services will be held Sunday afternoon from his late residence, 118 Highland street, Roxbury district, Boston. Newton Journal Newton, Massachusetts August 29, 1890 The Late Chas. J. Schumacher Mr. Editor – The recent unexpected and sad death of the fresco painter so widely known and so famous as Charles J. Schumacher, who was drowned in Charles river at Riverside, casts a shade of gloom amongst his old friends and acquaintances. He stood second in New England as the leading fresco painter; he was the leader in northern New England and perhaps first in the number of Catholic churches and cathedrals that he decorated. W. J. Mcpherson stands at the head as the oldest in the business in Boston, commencing with his brother in 1845 or 1846 and stands the first in the wide distribution of his extensively executed artistic specimens of large and elaborate work. These two men were looked upon as giants in the trade, both in financial and executive ability; both genial, gentlemanly and generous hearted, with noble specimens of humane kindness in necessitous cases, both to men and customers. I recollect Schumacher having Dr. Putnam’s church in Roxbury to execute in distemper; it was an old trap and was being done when Jupiter Pluvius was raining, and the church so leaked he could not get it to dry out. Schumacher told the committee of the difficulty and said: “Gentlemen, I will execute the work in oil without extra charge;” he was so bent on the execution of his present, that I did not even ask him if he was not casting pearls before swine. I did ask him if he ever found church committees over burdened with the grace of Christ? He acknowledged it to be a scarce article among those who liked to reap where they had not sown and gather where they had not strewn, and then recommend to others for another skinning. He said the sketch business was a kind of razzle dazzle. How a sketch was turned every which way to see how it was going to look when the bold idea was to be seen away off 30 to 100 feet. Schumacher was one of the first to give his men the shorter day. That alone may have hurt him with the Cyclops of finance, the Rothschilds, and others, who do not understand that the builders and decorators of homes and palaces deserve to have one, and that boasted civilization is a contemptuous farce when it rates money so high that every industrious man cannot have a home of his own; that even workmen should be fairly dealt with who sustain the merchants of Boston and the nations; that inside of forty-eight hours their money goes back to the provision dealer, the clothier, the grocer, the landlord, the shoe and coal dealer, and to retain their wages and keep them in idleness or drive them to a forced exodus is a suicidal policy and for which merchants mostly suffer in lack of rents to their landlords, who fill their stores calculating on stomachs to be fed and who do not think of slow starvation that exists when men are out of employment. In this regard Schumacher was a thorough artist as well as with his pencil; he was a Napoleon in the arts and sciences and distributed with noble hand the facilities that best diffused the benefits of the arts of peace and good will to men. I had no expectation that he would meet his Waterloo in the Charles River. “Mahlstick”