Charles Krutch was born in South Carolina, the son of Emile and Emma (Wiersing) Krutch, who emigrated from Germany in the political turmoil of 1848. His father was a music teacher who married one of his former pupils. For a time they lived at the German settlement of Wartburg in Morgan County, East Tennessee. They may have lived in Virginia also, but by 1861 the family was in Knoxville. Krutch lived in Knoxville for the rest of his life, except for a period after the Civil War when he studied and worked with a photographer in Atlanta.

In 1893, Krutch was working in Knoxville as an operator and retoucher for McCrary and Branson, which dealt in both photographs and paintings. In 1904 he become retouch...