James Lawson

LAWSON, RUMMEL, BAKER, NABSTEAD, ADDISON

Posted By: Sharon Elijah (email)
Date: 4/20/2020 at 09:28:26

3 April 1941 - The Anamosa Journal

OLIN--James Samuel Lawson, who shook hands with Abraham Lincoln as a boy of 11 and who later served in the Union army during the Civil war, died Sunday, March 23, at his home in Olin and was buried in the cemetery here.

Rev. W. T. Boston officiated at funeral service for the 93-year-old man, one of two surviving veterans in Jones county. Pallbearers included Guy Macomber, Ival Clark, Herm Hotz, C. N. Easterly, Arch Wood and Oscar Ogren.

Mr. Lawson met Lincoln after hearing him deliver a campaign address for the presidency in 1860 and four years later, at the age of 15, he enlisted as the youngest member of the 153rd Illinois regiment in the Union army.

He returned to his home in Crystal Lake after the Civil war and in 1866 came to Cedar county with his parents in a covered wagon. He was married to Elizabeth Rummel on September 16, 1868, and they established a home on a farm four miles south of Olin.

Later they homesteaded in Nebraska but returned to Jones county in 1889. Except for 14 years spent in Scott county, Mr. and Mrs. Lawson resided in Olin following 1889. Mrs. Lawson preceded her husband in death in 1938.

Surviving are three children, Fred D. Lawson and Mrs. Jennie N. Baker, Olin, and Mrs. Clara Nabstead, Davenport; a sister, Mrs. Florence Addison, Los Angeles, Calif., eight grandchildren, nine great grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.