Family:Charles Falls and Bedelia Croly (1)

C.B. came to Chicago in 1874, when he was 21 and found employment with an architect. Later he landed a job on the art staff of the Chicago Tribune. He covered news on assignment. After a few years, he left over a wage dispute. He then borrowed $50 and took off for New York. He got a job with an art studio called The Decorative Designers. He stayed 2 years. He decorated book covers. He then left the commercial studio to free lance. In 1959, he received the Clinedinst Medal for his contributions to the art of illustration. Charley designed his book, ABC Book, for his little 3-year old daughter, Bedelia.

Charles Buckles was a graphic artist who did posters. He lived in New York City.

They lived at 153 East 18th Street in New York City.

He was 86 years old when he died.

Charles obituary reads, "CHARLES FALLS, ILLUSTRATOR, DIES; AIDED BOOK DRIVES IN TWO WARS - Charles B. Falls, artist and illustrator who created the posters for the nationwide Victory Book campaigns in both World Wars, died last night at his home, 153 East Eighteenth Street. His age was 85. Mr. Falls took energetic means to dramatize the needs for millions of books for the nation's armed forces. In 1918 the swung by block and tackle into a conspicuous postion in front of the Fifth Avenue side of the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street to pain the fifteen-foot canvas. The ideas was to dramatize the need for books by the men overseas. The campaign was for 1,000,000 books. To stir the interests of those at home Mr. Falls depicted a marine, with rifle slung over his shoulder, staggering under the burden of the stacks of books that rose from locked hands at his waist level to high over his head. The canvas was a reproduction of the poster he had designed for the campaign started by the American Library Association. In the Nineteen Twenties, Mr. Falls helped organise and became first president of a group known as the Guild of Free-Lance Artists. His views, as expressed almost forty years ago in a newspaper interview, were a forerunner of the artist looking about him and noting the needs of a burgeoning advertising industry. The writer noted that Mr. Falls did not have a studio in Greenwich Village nor was he garbed in "tam o'shanter and flowing locks." Mr. Falls was quoted: "New York artists of today are business men. They have to be business men and to deal with business men if they expect success." In later years, he helped to develop the talents of disabled veterans in artistic lines. Surviving are his widow, the former Miss Bedelia Croly, and a daughter, Mrs. Berelia F. Hughes." [The New York Times, 16 April 1960]