Charles Richard Tuttle was born on March 14, 1848, in Wallace, Cumberland County, Nova Scotia.

He was a journalist, editor, author, and educator. After being a schoolteacher in Nova Scotia and a journalist in Boston, he came to Winnipeg in 1879 and founded the Winnipeg Daily Times, a newspaper that continued until 1885. He served as its editor until 1880. In 1881, he served as census commissioner for Manitoba, and, in 1883, he served on the Winnipeg School Board. In 1884, he accompanied an expedition to Hudson Bay under the command of Lieutenant Gordon. A candidate in an 1881 provincial by-election and the 1883 provincial general election, he was defeated each time. While in Manitoba, he assisted Donald Gunn with the publication of “A History of Manitoba from the Earliest Times” (1880). He also wrote, “Tuttle’s Popular History of the Dominion of Canada” (1877), “Royalty in Canada” (1878), and “Our North Land” (1885). He moved to Chicago around 1885, and there he wrote extensively on American local history.

In 1868, he married Margaret Elenor Bigney (1846–1941). He died on April 19, 1918, in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.