Carroll County IAGenWeb

HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY IOWA

A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement

VOLUME II ILLUSTRATED

CHICAGO THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1912

Transcriptions by Mona Sarratt Knight placed on this site with her permission.

A good farming property of one hundred and sixty acres in Union township engages the attention of William D. Coykendall, who was born in Clinton county, Iowa, on the 26th of December, 1859. He is a son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Scott) Coykendall, both natives of the state of New York. Daniel Coykendall was a son of Joel and Betsy (Driggs) Coykendall, the father a native of the Empire state. The mother was a daughter of Daniel Dow Driggs, a distinguished lieutenant of the war of 1812 who was wounded at Sacket Harbor. He married Minerva Steel whose father was a soldier in the Revolutionary war. Both Mr. and Mrs. Joel Coykendall attained a ripe old age, making their home in the state of New York where he followed farming. To them were born seven children: Daniel, Joseph, Jane, Melvina, Elizabeth, Cyrus and Morris, three of whom, the first and the last two were volunteers in the Civil war. Daniel Coykendall was reared to manhood in the state of his birth, from whence he moved to Illinois, locating in the vicinity of Canton, Fulton County, where he engaged in farming. From there he removed to Iowa about 1857, settling in Clinton County, where he was residing at the breaking out of the war. He enlisted as a private in Company D, Twenty-sixth Iowa Volunteer Infantry and went to the front. His wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Scott Coykendall, was a daughter of Nathan Scott, in whose family were eleven children: William, George, Nathan B., Emily and Elizabeth, while the others died in infancy. To Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Coykendall were born eight children, five of whom attained maturity: Nathan, who is a resident of Harper, Kansas; Alice, the deceased wife of A. E. White; Edwin, who is living in Alexandria, Minnesota; William D., our subject; and Flora, the wife of S. J. Alger. The mother passed away in 1874, at the age of forty-nine years, following which the father made his home with his son William D. and his daughter, Mrs. Alger, until his demise, which occurred at the age of eighty-six years, on the 11th of December 1910.

The early years in the life of William D. Coykendall were spent on the homestead where he was born in Clinton County, whose district schools provided him with an education. As the mother passed away when he was only fourteen years old, he knew little of home life during his youth, very soon thereafter going to work by the month as a farm hand. After he had acquired the capital and experience to enable him to begin to work for himself, he rented some land in Clinton County, which he cultivated for two years. In 1883 he came to Carroll County, locating within a mile of his present homestead. He first bought fifty-three acres which he operated for two years, with such success that he was able to add to his tract another fifty-three acres. At the present time he owns one hundred and sixty acres, upon which he has placed a number of improvements.

On the 19th of October 1881, Mr. Coykendall was united in marriage to Miss Sarah J. Bottomly, a daughter of John and Emma (Gaddis) Bottomly. Mrs. Coykendall was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and is of English extraction, her parents having emigrated from the mother country in childhood. They were married in Massachusetts, whence they migrated to Martin County, Minnesota, where they bought stock and intended to take up a claim, but located in Illinois instead. Mr. Bottomly passed away in Missouri in 1897, at the age of about seventy-one years, while the demise of his wife occurred in Kansas City in 1886, after she had passed the fifty-eighth anniversary of her birth. The paternal grandfather, John Bottomly, who was a farmer in England, took for his wife Sarah Tetlow, and to them were born thirteen children. Those who attained maturity were as follows: John, Seth, Robert, James, Mary, Elizabeth and Hannah. The maternal grandfather, Joseph Gaddis, was a native of Scotland, as the name would suggest, his vocation being that of a sailor. He married Mary Gill and to them were also born thirteen children, eleven of whom reached maturity, namely: William, Joseph, James, Hannah, Mary, Isabel, Eleanor, Margaret, Emma, Jane and Sarah. Mr. Gaddis passed away in Providence, Rhode Island, but his wife, who survived him twenty-three years, was living in Hanover, Illinois, at the time of her demise. Mr. and Mrs. John Bottomly were the parents of seven children, four of whom lived to maturity: James; Sarah J., now Mrs. Coykendall; John C. and Mary Emma.

Mr. and Mrs. Coykendall are the parents of a son and a daughter: Alice, who married Cleveland M. Straight, of Bear Creek, Montana; and Claude, who graduated from the engineering department of Ames College in 1910, and is now following his profession in Memphis, Tennessee.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Coykendall affiliate with the United Brethren Church of Carrollton, and politically he is a Republican. He is meeting with success in his agricultural pursuits and is known as one of the substantial farmers of Union Township.

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