Charles Erasmus Fenner

[4] Fenner also received a common school education in New Orleans, and then attended the Western Military Institute in Kentucky, graduating as valedictorian at the age of seventeen.

[7] He initially enlisted as a first lieutenant, assisting in forming the military battalion of the Louisiana Guards, and later becoming captain of one of the companies.

[3][5] The battalion's term of service expiring before the conscript law went into effect, and New Orleans having fallen to Union forces, Fenner organized a battery under his name in April 1862, in Jackson, Mississippi.

[4] In 1877, he authored resolutions adopted by the people of New Orleans in a mass meeting following the contested gubernatorial election between Democrat Francis T. Nicholls and Republican Stephen B. Packard, in which both candidates claimed victory, with the resolutions declaring that the people refused to submit to the Packard government.

[5][4] In November 1889, former Confederate States President Jefferson Davis fell ill while visiting Louisiana, and was taken to Fenner's Garden District home.

[11] In 1892, Fenner wrote the decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in the state's portion of the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, holding that "separate but equal" accommodations could be provided for whites and non-whites.

He was also president of the Boston Club for twelve years, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Peabody Educational Fund.