My Genealogy Hound

LORENZO A. PHELPS was born in Natchez, Miss., June 11, 1840. His father, Clark L. Phelps, now a resident of Cairo, Ill., was born in 1816, in Hartford, Conn., where he was reared. He removed to Natchez, Miss., in early manhood, and there married Miss Pascalena Paul. He was for thirty years the captain and owner of a steamboat, plying on the upper Mississippi and its tributaries. The maternal grandfather of L. A. Phelps, was Paul Pascalile, who in early life was a Corsican soldier; he served as a member of Napoleon’s body guard, and was a blood relation of that noted military leader. When Napoleon was finally subdued, Paul Pascalile found it necessary to flee from his native country, France, and he accordingly came to the United States, settling in Natchez, where he dropped the name of Pascalile and assumed the name of Paul, by which the family is still known. He married a lady of Irish ancestry. Pascalena, the mother of our subject, was born in Natchez, in 1819; L. A. Phelps is the eldest of a family of seven children, and was chiefly reared in Muscatine, Iowa, where the family resided for many years, and where his mother died in 1880. Several years of his earlier manhood were spent on the river, as pilot of his father’s steamboat and other vessels, but in 1871 he began his present business in Muscatine, Iowa, from whence he moved to Cairo, Ill., thence to Paducah, Ky., in 1883. Though his residence in the last named place has been brief, he has established an enviable reputation as a skillful artist and an amiable gentleman. His photographic establishments are becoming some of the attractions of the city. He was married in Muscatine, Iowa, in 1874, to Miss Lillian S. Perkins, daughter of Capt. T. P. Perkins, who was a well-known steam boat owner. She was born in St. Louis, in 1855, and is related to both Gen. William T. Sherman and the Confederate general, Robert E. Lee. Mr. and Mrs. Phelps have a family of four children, viz.: Lillian A., Frederick L., Ada P. and Frank S. Phelps.