My Genealogy Hound

Abraham F. Coleman, farmer and stock raiser of Sulphur Township, was born in Rowan County, N. C., June 30, 1835, and is a son of James D. and Sarah E. (Mann) Coleman, natives of North Carolina, where they lived until 1860. They then removed to Newton County, Mo., and during the war came to Benton County, Ark. They afterward located in Sebastian County, where the mother died on January 9, 1884, and the father January 8, 1885. The grandfather, James Coleman, was born in Virginia, and was of German and Irish descent. Our subject is the oldest of a family of eight children, and during his youth his early education was received at the common schools of North Carolina. In 1855 he left home, and going to the Granby lead mines of Newton County, Mo., remained there until the war. In 1862 he joined Company H, Second Kansas Cavalry. He fought in the battle at Saline, and operated in Missouri and Arkansas until mustered out at Fort Gibson at the close of the war. He then went to Lawrence, Kas., and from there came to this county, where he has since made his home. In December, 1870, he married Lucy A., daughter of James and Eliza Crockett, who came to Missouri from Kentucky, where Mrs. Coleman was born, and then immigrated to Arkansas in 1859, settling in Sebastian County. Mr. Crockett is now living in Chickasaw Nation; his wife died here. The union of Mr. and Mrs. Coleman has been blessed with six children, all but two now living. Mr. Coleman owns 200 acres of land, forty being bottom land. He has improved and cultivated ninety acres, and is a self-made man. He settled upon his farm when it was surrounded by a wilderness, inhabited by wild animals, and when there were but five houses between his farm and Fort Smith. Mr. Coleman cast his first presidential vote for Buchanan in 1856. After the war he was a Republican until the Baxter trouble, when he again espoused Democratic principles.