Born in October 1852 to George W. and Doritha M. Thomas, Charles W. Thomas lived in Kentucky until the late 1850s when his family moved to Missouri. He attended Missouri State Normal School of the First District, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts and Didactics in 1875. On August 5th, 1879, Charles married classmate and fellow graduate Serelda Gilstrap. Both worked as teachers in Missouri, but Mr. Thomas soon left the teaching profession to pursue law. He passed the Missouri bar in 1878 and worked as a clerk of the Missouri Senate Judiciary Committee in 1879. Mrs. Thomas continued to teach while earning a Master of Arts and Didactics degree. In the 1880s, the Thomas family moved to Woodland, California, where they were active charter members of the Woodland Shakespeare Club. In 1882, Mrs. Thomas became a book reviewer for the local newspaper, The Woodland Democrat. Charles W. Thomas was an avid collector of autographs by well known literary and public figures from the 19th century. It was their daughter, Henriette G. Thomas, a local San Jose High School librarian, who inherited the correspondence collection, which she added to before she bequeathed the autograph collection to the San Jose State College library in 1965.