Charles W. St. Clair Sr., an accountant who launched a second career as a Jarrettsville Christmas tree farmer, died May 31 of pneumonia at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air. He was 88.
Born on a Jarrettsville dairy farm, in the early 19th-century house he would restore and move back to in 1977, Mr. St. Clair was a direct descendant of Luther Jarrett, founder of Jarrettsville. He grew up on the farm but had a career in business before he started moonlighting in the early 1960s as a Christmas tree grower as a way to put his children through college.
Even when he returned to his agricultural roots, Mr. St. Clair initially did so on rented land, off the family farm, recalled his son, Charles St. Clair Jr.
"My grandfather wouldn't give any of the land to grow Christmas trees because he thought it was silly," Charles Jr. said. "'Why would people pay for Christmas trees? They could just walk in the woods and cut one down?' That was his whole frame of reference. He hadn't been off the farm much."
Mr. St. Clair planted his first crop of trees in 1961 on about five rented acres and had expanded to 50 acres by the time his father died in 1971. Today, Jarrettsville Nurseries is one of the largest Christmas tree farms in Maryland, covering about 100 acres. Still owned by his family and run by his stepson, Boyd Saulsbury, and a nephew, Gary Thomas, the farm specializes in Fraser firs, which are desirable because their needles don't drop but are tricky to grow in Maryland, Charles Jr. said.
"Granddad eventually admitted that, 'Charles, that was probably a good idea,'" Charles Jr. said. "He gave him credit for it, but he still didn't give him any land."
Mr. St. Clair moved the operation to the original family farm in the late 1970s after inheriting part of the farm from his father.
Mr. St. Clair graduated from Highland High School in 1939. As a teenager, he was active in 4-H and played trumpet in the school band.
He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in agricultural education in 1943 and, after returning to the family farm for a year, enlisted in the Army as an infantryman. He qualified as an expert marksman on both the M-1 carbine and the light machine gun. During World War II, he was stationed in France and was honorably discharged with the rank of master sergeant in August 1946.
After returning from the service, he was appointed the assistant county agent for Cecil County. He left that position to become the vice president of D.E. Foote & Co., and remained there until the canning firm was purchased by the American Can Co. a decade later.
During that time, Mr. St. Clair attended the Baltimore College of Commerce, where earned a degree as a certified public accountant. He later formed an accounting firm, Knair Associates, with colleagues Mel Nizer and Dick Knight.
In 1957, Mr. St. Clair began a 30-year career with the Baltimore Gas & Electric Co., working primarily as an investigator in the methods department. Because of his agricultural background, he also oversaw the buffer farm around the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant.
In 1961, he launched his Christmas tree venture to earn extra money for his children's college fund. Growing trees appealed to him more than dairy farming because he could do much of the work on weekends, his son said.
"My father would take me to the farm on weekends, where we would spend all day planting, mowing or shearing," Charles Jr. said. "Then we would camp out in the field under the stars so we could do it all again early the next morning."
Mr. St. Clair was preceded in death by his wife, the former Eleanor Saulsbury.
Mr. St. Clair was a member of the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Bel Air, where a funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Monday. He will be buried in the family plot at Bethel Presbyterian Church in White Hall.
"The last 100 yards into the cemetery, we're actually going to transport him on the wagon with a tractor and it will have a Christmas tree on it," his son said.
In addition to his son and stepson, he is survived by two daughters, Patricia Wertman of Staunton, Va., and Lynda McRee of Jarrettsville; seven grandchildren; and two great-granddaughters. His first marriage, to the former Dorothy Woerner, ended in divorce.