Charles L. Capen

Charles Laban Capen (1845–1927) was a prominent Illinois lawyer.

He was born in Union Springs, New York on January 31, 1845, the son of Luman Capen, a direct descendant of Bernard Capen, who was one of the 140 emigrants who left Dorchester, Dorset to found Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1630. Luman Capen was an ardent abolitionist and maintained a station of the Underground Railroad in Union Springs. A supporter of the short-lived Free Soil Party, in the wake of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, Luman Capen answered the call of the New England Emigrant Aid Company for abolitionists to settle in the Kansas Territory. Charles L. Capen attended the high school of the Illinois State Normal University, beginning in 1862. At Harvard, his teachers included Louis Agassiz, Asa Gray, James Russell Lowell, and Francis Bowen.

Capen was also active in the Illinois State Bar Association, serving as its president 1903-1904.

Capen had married Ella Eugenia Briggs in 1875, and together, the couple had two children: Charlotte and Bernard.

Capen died at his home in Bloomington on May 21, 1927.