Coffman, Columbus

COFFMAN, CALDWELL

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 8/21/2007 at 23:39:31

Source: Monona County History 1890
Chicago National Pub

Columbus Coffman, is widely and favorable known as the enterprising and successful agriculturist, whose property is situated on section 27, St. Clair Township. Upon this he settled in the spring of 1873, on coming to Monona County. For several years, owing to the fact of his land being in dispute between Cartwright and the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Company, he did not purchase it nor did he make any improvements upon it to mention. The title being settled in 1878, he made the purchase and commenced in earnest, its improvement. Of his large farm of two-hundred and fifty-eight acres, he has two-hundred and fifty of it under a high state of cultivation. In the winter of 1882, he put up a large barn of the Pennsylvania pattern, 36x46 feet in size, with eighteen foot posts, with a basement under about half of it.
Mr. Coffman, a native of Louisa County, Kentucky, was born September 30, 1847, and is the son of Zachariah and Susan Coffman. In 1856, his mother died and with his father he removed to Mason County, Virginia, where they remained about a year, and then coming to the Northwest, settled in Marion County, Iowa. There they remained until the fall of 1860, when they both removed back to our subject’s native county, on “the dark and bloody ground.” A year later they moved back into Virginia, where Columbus mad his home, in Mason County, until 1865. After a short time spent in St. Louis, the latter came back to Marion County, Iowa, and was there engaged in farming until the spring of 1873, when he came to this county as above noted. For fifteen years after the death of his mother, the father and his two sons, Columbus and Zachariah, did their own housekeeping, but after the marriage of our subject his father took up his residence with the latter, with whom he remained until taken from this world by death, July 1, 1889, at the age of eighty-two years.
Mr. Coffman was married in Marion County, Iowa, August 20, 1870, to Miss Pantha J. Caldwell, a native of Marion County, Iowa, and a daughter of James and Maria Caldwell. By this union they are the parents of seven children: Zezola C., Francis C.C., Grace, who died in infancy: Milo H., Blanche M., Goldie J., and James Z.S.
There where but few settlers in St. Clair Township when Mr. Coffman settled here, and but two schoolhouses and he has seen it grow from a comparative wilderness, to its present populous and wealthy condition.