Submitted by Sharon R Becker

Datus E. COON was one of the pioneer newspaper men of Iowa. He established the first newspaper in Mitchell County, at Osage, in 1856, called the Democrat and supported the administration of James BUCHANAN. In 1858 he established a paper called the Cerro Gordo Press, at Mason City, the first in the county. Two years later, in 1860, he moved to Ellington and there established the first paper published in Hancock County. When the Civil War began he received authority from Governor KIRKWOOD to raise a company for the Second Iowa Cavalry. It became Company I in the organization of the regiment. He was a gallant soldier and was promoted to major in September, 1861, to colonel in 1864 and brevetted Brigadier-General in March, 1865. [He was with the 2nd Cavalry through all its campaigns from the March to Missouri in February of 1862, Meridan Yazoo River Campaign in Mississippi, campaigns in Alabama and Tennessee, Battle of Nashville November 14, 1864 to January 23, 1865, and until the end of the war.] 

He located in Alabama at tha close of the war and was elected to the Legislature during the reconstruction period. Mr. COON was appointed by President HAYES Consul to Babaca, Cuba. In 1875 he went to San Diego, California, as Superintendent of the Chinese Exclusion Law, where he was killed by the accidental discharge of a pistol on the 17th of December, 1893. 

NOTE: General Datus E. COON was interred at Mount Hope Cemetery, San Diego, California; G.A.R. Hill plot, section 1, lot 4, grave 2. 

NOTE: . . . After General Datus COON came to San Diego, he was accidentally shot by a fellow Civil War veteran friend in 1893 and died the same evening. A year later, a San Diego G.A.R. chapter was named in his honor." ~ An Illustrated History of Southern California. 

SOURCE:
GUE, Benjamin F. History of Iowa: From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Vol. IV. Pp. 59-60. Century History Co. New York. 1903.

Transcription and notes by Sharon R. Becker, April of 2011