Charles Henry Stanley was born in Brighton, England in September, 1819. In 1839, he defeated Howard Staunton (+3-2=1), receiving odds of pawn and move. Stanley emigrated to New York in 1842 and worked at the British Consulate. He was regarded as the best chess player in New York from 1842 to 1857. In 1844, he defeated John William Schulten in two matches in New York. He started America's first chess column in the New York Spirit of the Times on March 1, 1845, which contained the first chess problem published in America. The chess column ran until October, 1848 (1).In 1845, he, again, defeated John William Schulten in a match in New York. In December, 1845, he defeated Eugene Rousseau at the New Orleans Chess Club (Sazerac Coffee House) in the first unofficial US Championship (15 wins, 8 losses, 8 draws) (9). This was the first organized chess event in the United States. The stakes for the event was $1,000. Rousseau’s second was Eugene Morphy, Paul's uncle. Paul Morphy attended the match at the age of 8 and became interested in chess. In 1846 Stanley defeated Charles Vezan in New York and George Hammond in Chicago. In October 1846, he started the American Chess Magazine: a periodical Organ of Communication for American Chess-Players, which folded in September 1847 (2). In 1846 he published the first book in America on a chess match, 31 Games of Chess. The New York Albion published his chess column from 1848 until 1856; it was then conducted by Perrin and Young until George Henry Mackenzie took over in 1866. (3).
In February, 1850 he defeated John Turner (10) of Louisville, Kentucky in Washington, DC and drew a match against Johann Jacob Loewenthal (+3-3=0) in New York. In 1852 he suggested the holding of an international chess tournament at the Great Exhibition in New York in 1853, but nothing came of it. In 1852, he drew a match with Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint Amant in New York (+4-4=0). In 1855 he organized the first World Chess Problem tournament.
In 1857 he was knocked out in the first round of the 1st American Chess Congress by Theodore Lichtenhein, winning 2 games and losing 3 games. He was considered to be America's first chess champion until he lost a match with Paul Morphy. Soon in December of that year, Stanley’s daughter, Pauline, was born & named after her father's successor in chess. From October until June of 1859, he edited another column for the 11 year-old Harper's Weekly, also publishing Morphy’s Match Games and The Chess Player’s Instructor prepared over the course of that winter & spring (4, 5, 6).
In 1860 he returned to England and took 2nd in the 3rd British Chess Association Congress in Cambridge, England, losing to Ignatz Von Kolisch. From 1860 to 1862, he edited a chess column in the Manchester Express and Guardian, winning an 1861 tournament in Leeds, England (7).
He lost an 1868 match to George Mackenzie in New York and wrote another chess column for the New York Round Table in the year following the match (8). He was an alcoholic who spent his last 20 years in institutions on Ward’s Island and in the Bronx. He died in 1901.
References: (1) New York Spirit of the Times Wikipedia article: Spirit of the Times (1845-8), (2) American Chess Magazine: a periodical Organ of Communication for American Chess-Players (1846-7), (3) New York Albion (1848-56), (4) Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization - Chess Chronicle - http://harpers.org/index.html (1858-9), (5) Morphy’s Match Games (1859), (6) The Chess Player’s Instructor (1859), (7) Manchester Express and Guardian (1860-2), (8) New York Round Table (1869), (9) http://graeme.50webs.com/chesschamp... (10) http://graeme.50webs.com/chesschamp... (11) http://www.chessarch.com/excavation... (collated chess columns of historical interest).
Wikipedia article: Charles Henry Stanley
