Over the state at large the name of Charles H. Sessions is most familiarly associated with the office of secretary of state, which he held for two terms, and now as private secretary to Governor Capper. But Mr. Sessions himself does not consider his political honors to represent his real work. He is a newspaper man primarily and fundamentally, politics had always been a side issue, and he had never allowed anything to interfere long with his active participation in the newspaper trade.
His home had been in Kansas for the past twenty-eight years. A son of M. L. and Mary A. (Reynolds) Sessions, who are still living, he was born at Woodstock, Ohio, February 1, 1868. He spent his early youth on a farm, attended the Ohio schools, and was twenty years of age when in 1888 he first put foot on Kansas soil. His first work was as a cub reporter on the Kansas City Times, but he was assigned to duty in the Kansas City, Kansas, office. He was with the Times until 1893, and then became branch manager of the Kansas City, Kansas, office of the Kansas City Journal. He is one of the Journal’s staff of veterans, and is still connected with that great Middle West paper. The Journal sent him to Topeka in 1896 as special correspondent, and in 1906 he became Washington correspondent for the paper and remained in the East two years. On returning to Kansas in 1908 he resumed newspaper work and in 1910 was the successful nominee of the republican party for the office of secretary of state. Two years later he was re-elected, and at the close of his term became private secretary to Governor Capper. In 1906 he was secretary to Governor Hoch, but resigned when he went to Washington.
Mr. Sessions is a member of varions fraternal organizations, and is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason. By his marriage to Mary E. Barker he had one son, Charles B. Sessions.
