Asa White

WHITE, KOONS

Posted By: Deborah Gilbert (email)
Date: 9/5/2016 at 15:06:38

Book: Maxwell 1883-1983

Asa White was born in Indiana in 1843. During the Civil War he served with the 150th Volunteers from Indiana in Company A for three years as a part time bugler.

Asa and Abigail were married in 1864 and during their marriage nine children were born. Two died in infancy. Five daughters and two sons survived as follows: Arta, Barbra, Minnie, Ida, Hattie, Lemuel and Frances Marion (called Med).

They moved from Indiana to Minnesota, then to Potwin, Kansas for a number of years. They moved by covered wagon, pulled by Morgan horses, to the settlement of Maxwell, Iowa in 1881 bringing with them what stock they could.

Imagine the duties of courageous, devoted Abigail traveling again to a new location with Asa and six children, ranging in age from fifteen years to a baby girl born in January of 1881.

They purchased land for them, a home, and pastureland in the Highland Park area of Maxwell, and an eighty acre farm three miles west of Maxwell. Only research would tell us which place their first home.

The farm had a large pasture with a brook and willow trees and boggy meadow land where wild flowers grew, and land available to till for grain for their stock and food for the family. Water was no problem as the farm had an artesian well.

We know that in 1896 a Morgan stallion of the lineage of the Great Morgan Justin was pastured there. Pictures of this stallion hang in the Maxwell Museum.

Asa was an astute man, keeping abreast of the times and he and his family were contributing citizens.

All of their children had married and left Maxwell except Arta and Med, when Abigail came down with a lingering illness. Abigail's half-sister, Katie Koons, came from Indiana to help care for her. Abigail's life of serving others and her sickness came to an end in 1910.

Katie returned to Indiana, but in 1912 asa went to visit her and brought her home as his wife. Aunt Katie was a small, pleasant, dutiful lady and cared for the family and served the community well. Asa died before she did, but the family she had befriended then cared for her until her death in 1946 at age 92.

Asa died in 1932. His funeral, with full military honors, was held at the Christian Church which he had faithfully attended and supported. The newspaper caption of his obituary reads 'Taps for venerable Civil War veteran, Uncle Asa White, last Union resident veteran of Maxwell, answers final roll call.'