Carlos Peirce, son of Burros and Sarah (Peirce) Osgood, was born at the family homestead in Manchester, March 11, 1857. His studies in the public schools were supplemented by a course at the Canandaigua Academy, and graduating from that institution, he taught school for some time. At the age of twenty-one he went to Iowa, and jointly with W. H. Wilson, who had accompanied him thither, he assumed the management of a large tract of wild land owned by parties in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He also engaged in farming on an extensive scale. In the spring of 1883 he went to the then territory of Dakota, where he engaged extensively in the raising of wheat, and in company with others founded the town of Newark, located some forty miles from the nearest postoffice. In addition to his farming interests he conducted a profitable real estate, loan and mortgage business, and was the first justice of the peace elected in Marshall county. In 1889 he returned to the homestead farm in Manchester, which he carried on for some three years, and for the succeeding ten years he acted as district agent for the Travelers’ Insurance Company, covering five counties. For the past eight years Mr. Osgood has been prominently identified with the independent telephone movement in western New York. In 1902 he established a line in Manchester and Shortsville, with a toll line to Clifton Springs, connecting with the independent line in that locality, and encouraged by the success attending his first venture in this direction, in the following year he organized and incorporated the Red Jacket Telephone Company, turning over to that corporation his lines already established and becoming its president and general manager. The Red jacket company is now (1910) in the full tide of prosperity and its success is mainly due to the ability and sound judgment of its promoter. He is a Master Mason and a member of Canandaigua Lodge No. 394.
Mr. Osgood was married January 22, 1889, to Miss Daisy D. Allen, born in West Waterville, Maine, June 10, 1868, daughter of Stephen Allen. They have had two children: 1. Joseph Clark, born in January, 1890; died the same year. 2. Carlos Allen, born August 6, 1894; died September 13, 1895.