Charles Jesse Child

The painter and writer Charles Jesse Child (born Robert Child) and his identical twin, Paul Cushing Child, were born in Montclair, New Jersey on January 15, 1902. Their parents were Charles Tripler Child, director of the U.S. Astrophysical Observatory at the Smithsonian Institution, and his wife Bertha May (née Cushing), a noted society concert singer. Six months later, James died and Bertha returned to her family home in Boston, Massachusetts, where her children grew up surrounded by music. Charles played the violin, Paul the cello, and their older sister Mary the piano.

At Harvard University, Charles become the art editor of “The Harvard Lampoon.” In the 1920s, he accompanied his family to Paris, where he studied art. In 1926, Charles married an oil heiress named Fredericka “Freddie” Boyles, with whom he had three children after they returned to the U.S. in 1930.

When his brother Paul married Julia McWilliams – later famous as PBS chef Julia Child – they held their wedding reception in the backyard of Charles and Freddie’s home in Lumberville, Pennsylvania. In 1965, Charles wrote and illustrated “Roots in the Rocks,” a memoir about his summers shared with Freddie, Paul, and Julia in a log cabin that the two couples built off the coast of Maine during the 1940s. He also wrote about his life and travels in a column called “The Inner Eye” for the “New Hope Gazette” (New Hope, Pennsylvania).