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JOHN P. COBURN is a prominent and well known agriculturist residing in section 8, Kane township, where the greater part of his business life has been passed, and he has in the meantime been actively identified with its public affairs. He was born at Lewiston in Androscoggin county, Maine, May 16, 1847, a son of Albert and Elizabeth (Harris) Coburn, both of whom were also born in that state, the father in 1816 and the mother in 1826. There were five children in their family, and three are yet living: John P.; Mrs. Marshie E. Crocker, of Wyanet, Illinois; and Mary A. Coburn, of Cherokee county, Iowa. In 1856 the family left Maine for the west, and while stopping in the state of New York for a visit the father died in 1856, and the mother and children continued the journey to Belvidere, Illinois. The mother lived there until about 1863, moving then to Wyanet in the same state, and she died there on the 26th of January, 1909.
John P. Coburn was nine years of age when the family left their native state of Maine for the west, and he received his educational training in the Belvidere, Illinois, high school. At the age of twenty he came to Benton county, Iowa, and he purchased the south half of section 8 in Kane township for six dollars and twenty-five cents an acre. The land was then in its virgin state, wild and unimproved, but he performed the arduous work of placing it under cultivation, and all the improvements on this now valuable homestead were placed there by him, he having raised the trees from the seed. For some years he has also been a stock feeder. In 1900 Mr. Coburn was elected a county supervisor and the chairman of the board, and it was during his two years of office that the court house for Benton county was erected as well as the county home. He served seven years in that position, and has also served for many years as a school director.
On the 18th of September, 1884, Mr. Coburn was married to Isabelle Barr, who was born in Belvidere, Illinois, in 1857, and a son Carl has been born to them. Mr. Coburn is allied with the Republicans in politics, and he is one of the representative men of Benton county.
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