My Genealogy Hound

William H. Thomas was born in Ontario County, N. Y., in 1840, and remained there until seventeen years old. In 1857, with his parents, he moved to Cairo, Ill. In April, 1861, he enlisted under the call for three months’ volunteers, in Houghtalling’s battery, Tenth Illinois, Col. B. M. Prentice, commanding. At the close of that service he re-enlisted as second lieutenant of an independent company from Alexander and Pulaski Counties, Ill., commanded by Capt. George W. McKenzie, which company was afterward attached to the Twenty-ninth Illinois Infantry. Sometime after this he was placed in the quartermaster’s department, where he remained until near the close of the war. After leaving the army he entered Bryant & Stratton’s Commercial College, Cleveland, Ohio, and, after graduating from that institution, returned to Cairo, Ill. In 1866 he married Miss Mary A. Lufkin, a native of Maine, and in the following year started in business as a commission merchant, building up a successful trade in flour and grain throughout the Southern States. Retiring from that business in 1875, he moved to La Grange, Mo., and engaged in the small fruit business. He now has about twenty-five acres in these fruits, besides his other well-improved farming grounds, known as “River View Fruit Farm,” adjoining La Grange on the north. He has four children—two sons and two daughters—the eldest of the former being a graduate of La Grange College. The father, William Thomas, was a native of Wales, and came to New York when a mere boy. He married Mary A. Hillyard in that State, and in 1857 moved to Illinois, where the mother died in 1864. The father afterward moved to Chicago, where he now resides with his children, but eight of them are living, three being deceased.