Coakes, John

COAKES

Posted By: Joyce Hickman (email)
Date: 9/2/2008 at 17:18:24

John Coakes

(From the 1883 History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, by J. H. Keatley, p.134, Knox Twp.)
John Coakes, livery, Avoca, born in Canada in 1840, son of Samuel Coakes, a painter. Subject has two sisters in Avoca, and one brother in the Sandwich Islands. He left Coburg, Canada, with only $5, crossing Lake Ontario in the Maple Leaf; landed in New York in 1860; enlisted in the Thirty-fourth New York Regiment (Col. Suter), in the fall of 1861. His first battle was Fair Oaks; was in the seven days' retreat with McClellan; at the battle of Antietam; both fights at Fredericksburg, being with the Army of the Potomac all the time, and mustered out July 3, 1863, at Albany. He worked in livery stable in Palmyra, N. Y., then went to Detroit, Mich., continuing in the same business for six years, when he came to Avoca, in July, 1870, and opened business for himself, with two buggies and four horses, Avoca at this time not having more than twenty buildings. Now he has a stable 34 x 146 feet, containing nine rigs. He was married, in the fall of 1864, in Detroit, to Miss Rozina Kiersey, who died in the fall of 1878, leaving two children - one boy and one girl. Subject's parents are both dead.