My Genealogy Hound

Alfred Rathbun was born in Steuben County, N. Y., February 24, 1823. He is one of ten children born to the marriage of Alfred Rathbun and Laura Brown. The former was born in Connecticut, and was the son of Job Rathbun. He married in his native State, but soon after moved to New York, where he engaged in farming. In 1838 he removed to Iowa, and located on what was known as “the half-breed tract of land,” where he continued to reside until his death, about 1857. Job Rathbun was a farmer, and served for a short time in the Revolutionary War. He died at the age of ninety years, and his wife at the age of eighty-six. Our subject came to Iowa with his father’s family. He married, and began life for himself by working lands on the Des Moines River, where he remained for about six years, then removed to Clark County, Mo., locating near Chambersburg, where he resided for another six years. In 1855 he came to Scotland County, and located on a farm near his present home. At the same time, together with his brother, he secured a warrant on eighty acres of his present farm, upon which he erected a dwelling in 1858. In April, 1861, he joined the Home Guards, and afterward Company I, Twenty-first Missouri Infantry, with which he served until December, 1864. He was at Athens, Shiloh, Corinth and other places. While on the way from Memphis to Vicksburg he was shot through the right arm. This wound was received after the battle of Athens, and he was also wounded by a bushwhacker in Missouri in 1861, and was also struck by a spent ball at Corinth. September 12, 1843, he married Mary Thorington, who died March 31, 1874, leaving seven children: John, George, Nancy, Alfred, Emily, William and Charity. The two eldest boys were in the late war. John was in the militia, and George was in the Twenty-first Missouri Infantry; was discharged on account of disability, came home, recovered, re-enlisted, and served during the war. On July 1, 1874, Mr. Rathbun married Mrs. Eunice (Hohstadt) Beckwith, a native of Virginia, and daughter of John Hohstadt, who was the son of Jacob Hohstadt, a German soldier in Burgoyne’s army. He was captured at the battle of Stillwater, and after the war remained in this country. His son was a soldier in the American Army in 1812, and two of John’s sons served in the Union Army in the late war. He died in 1880. Our subject and his wife are Christian people.