Kilpatrick, Ephraim 1808-1900

KILPATRICK, KILLPATRICK, LINCOLN, TEMPLIN, HARLAN, DAVIS, BYRKET, WOODS, DINWIDDIE

Posted By: Pat Ryan White (email)
Date: 1/31/2020 at 08:36:36

DEATH OF EPHRIAM KILPATRICK

A Pioneer of the West Who Served With Lincoln in the Black Hawk War.

Ephriam Kilpatrick, father of Mrs. H. W. Templin of East Sound died there at his daughter’s home Saturday, June 2, at the advanced age of 92 years, 1 month and 4 days, having been confined to his bed but one day. The funeral took place at East Sound, Monday and the interment at Bay View Cemetery, Whatcom, Tuesday.

Mr. Kilpatrick was in many respects a remarkable man. It is given to but few men or women to be a witness of so many great events; of so many wonderful achievements in invention, science and are; of such remarkable industrial development and educational and social progress, and at the same time to be a participant, in a measure, in so many of the events which have made the nineteenth century the most remarkable in all history. And he was in full possession of his faculties to the day of his death.

He was born in South Carolina January 28, 1808, more than seven years before the battle of Waterloo and nearly a score of years before Queen Victoria became sovereign of England. He went with his parents to Kentucky when “the dark and bloody ground" was still a wilderness, and with them settled in Southern Illinois in 1819, passing the years of his youth and early manhood among the sturdy pioneers of that rich section of the then far West. There he taught school and studied law, and there he served in the same regiment with Abraham Lincoln in the Black Hawk war. About 1838 he moved to Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and engaged in the practice of law. He was clerk of the district court for a number of years and judge of the court for one or more terms. During the civil war he accepted an appointment in the government service at Washington and was private secretary to Senator Harlan, afterwards one of the judges of the United States Supreme Court, when the senator was secretary of the interior under President Lincoln, whose eldest son, Robert T. Lincoln, married Mary Harlan, the senator's daughter. After Senator Harlan’s retirement from the cabinet, Judge Kilpatrick returned to his old place in the interior department. He served for many years as chief clerk of the United States land office and was for more than thirty years in the government.

Accompanied by his wife, whose maiden name was Sarah Davis and who was a woman of many talents and accomplishments, he came to this state in 1893. Mrs. Kilpatrick died in Fairhaven about five years ago. Four children survive them, Mrs. George Byrket, whose husband is a clergyman in Iowa; Mrs. J.T. Woods of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, mother of Charles Woods, of East Sound, now in Alaska; Mrs. H.W. Templin of East Sound, and Mrs. W. K. Dinwiddie, wife of Lieut. Dinwiddie, of the United States army, instructor in military tactics at one of the state schools of Iowa at Cedar Falls.

[Undated, unnamed newspaper obituary, probably June 1900, East Sound, Washington]

Ephraim and Sarah were listed in the 1895 Iowa State Census in Mt. Pleasant, Ward II