This is a biography I have donated. If you have any biographies you can donate, please drop a line to Janine M. Bork.Your information can help others.

Charles E. was born on May 8, 1873, in Union county, and is the son of Samuel and Eliza (Ruckman) Cochran, natives of Iowa. The father was an agriculturist in his native state, and after his marriage resided near Agency, in Wapellow county, for a time, and then came to Union county, in 1872, and located a farm about twenty miles north of Union on the Grande Ronde river, where he resided until two years since. He was one of the most successful farmers of the county, and has now retired from active business, and resides on the Hood river, Oregon. He had three children and gave each one a college education. It is interesting that when Mr. Cochran first came here there was only one house between Union and Summerville, and during the times of Indian uprising he remained unmolested on his farm. The immediate subject of this sketch was educated in Union in the graded and high schools, graduating from the latter at the age of fourteen years. The following year he entered the state normal and received his diploma therefrom at the age of seventeen years. The following year he taught school, and at the age of eighteen years went to work for one year in the Farmers' Mortgage and Savings bank of Summerville. In the fall of 1892, when he had arrived at his nineteenth year, he was matriculated at the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, entering the law department. Two years later, he graduated with honors from this institution, and in 1894 located in Union where he soon gained a prominence in the legal world, because of his capabilities in his chosen profession and because of the thorough and deep research with which he had fortified himself in this line. For three terms he served as recorder of Union, viz." 1895-6-7. In 1896 he was made secretary of the Republican State Central convention, and again in 1898 he held the same position. In 1900 he was before the people for district attorney of the eighth judicial district, but was defeated by a small majority.

Shortly after his graduation, Mr. Cochran was married, but fate decreed that the anticipated comfort and joy rightly to be expected form such a union should not be his to participate in. Oftentimes a wave of disappointment and painful hardship but brings out the hidden resources of the nature to meet and over-ride it, and so in this case we find a stanch manhood that is enabled to lay aside pain of this world and affiance himself so thoroughly to the muse of his profession that success, and that, too, of the brightest kind, is unable to elude his grasp. While Mr. Cochran ahs but just begun the legal career, he has already manifested a power in the prosecution of it that has called forth the unstinted encomiums of his fellows and causes his opponents to fear his blows, and every indication points to the future when he shall stand one of the leading legal lights of the entire state.

In fraternal affiliations, Mr. Cochran is highly connected, being a member of the A.F.&A.M., Grande Ronde Valley Lodge. No. 56; of the R.A.M., Grand Ronde Chapter No. 20; of the R.&S.M., Union Council, No. 5. all of Union.