Charles James Rhoads was born in Germantown, Philadelphia on October 4, 1872. After attending William Penn Charter School and Haverford College, receiving his bachelors degree in 1893, Rhoads was worked in various positions with the Banking Department of the Girard Trust Company. He rose quickly in the company, becoming Treasurer at the age of twenty-eight and Vice-President four years later. He married Lillie Frishmuth in 1912.

In 1914, Rhoads was selected to become the first governor of the Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia, but still remained a member of the Board of Managers at Girard Trust. After the United States entered World War I in 1917, Rhoads, a member of the Society of Friends, contributed to the war effort as a civilian volunteer. He resigned from the Federal Reserve Bank and served the Y.M.C.A. by raising funds for its work, later traveling overseas as Chair of its program, Prisoners of War Relief.

Following the Armistice, Rhoads took charge of Quaker relief and construction projects in France. Subsequently, he returned to America and became President of the Central National Bank. In 1929, President Herbert Hoover requested Rhoads to serve as a Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He had knowledge of Indian problems because of the interests of his father, James E. Rhoads who helped establish the Indian Rights Association. His lifelong friend J.Henry Scattergood, who assisted him in France, accompanied Charles Rhoads to Washington as Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Their policies emphasized the home and community as the center of Indian life and education. Rhoads again took an active role in Indian affairs in 1948 as a member of the Hoover Commission.

Charles Rhoads was a devoted member of the Society of Friends, and very active within the Philadelphia area business and academic communities. For thirty-six years he served as a member of the Boards of the Provident Mutual Life Insurance and the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society. His association with Bryn Mawr College began in 1907 when he was elected a Member of the Trustees and later in 1936 became President of the Trustees and Chairman of the Board of Directors. He held both offices until his death in 1956 whereon the College was the beneficiary of his "residuary" estate.

The Rhoads Papers consists of two distinctly different parts, the first pertaining to the appointment of Charles James Rhoads as Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1929, and the second relating to his and his father's interests in Indians. Among the latter are several personal letters from R. H. Pratt, Superintendent of the Indian Training School at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., to James Rhoads; printed material related to Indian affairs and problems; handwritten notes and typed essays regarding Indian affairs.

Provenance

The Rhoads Papers came to the American Philosophical Society Library in 1965 as a gift of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Company (Philadelphia, Pa.), through Mrs. Thatcher Brown III.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Charles James Rhoads Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Catalogued by Lawrence Novelli, 1991.

Related material

The Records of the Indian Rights Association are housed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Collection 1523).

• United States. Bureau of Indian Affairs

• Telegrams

• Balch, Emily Greene, 1867-1961
• Frankfurter, Felix, 1882-1965
• Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964
• Pratt, Richard Henry, 1840-1924
• Rhoads, Charles James, 1872-1956
• Rhoads, James E. (James Evans), 1828-1895

• Indian Rights Association
• Indians of North America