COON, Datus E. (ca. 1916)

COON

Posted By: Jennifer Gunderson (email)
Date: 3/22/2021 at 22:52:02

DATUS E. COON
JOURNALIST AND SOLDIER

Datus E. Coon, one of the pioneer newspaper publishers of Northeastern Iowa, founded a local democratic paper at each of the following places: Osage, Mason City and Ellington. His staunch support of the Union so gratified Governor Kirkwood that he early received from the governor a commission to form a company for the Second Iowa Cavalry. In September, 1861, he was made major of his regiment; May 4, 1864, he became its colonel, and March 8, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general. His career as a soldier closed September 19, 1865, at Selma, Alabama, where his regiment was mustered out. During most of his career as colonel, he commanded the Second Brigade under General Hatch. He was a gallant and efficient officer and saw much service.

On returning from the army, he became a resident of Alabama, and during the reconstruction period was a member of the Alabama Legislature. President Hayes
recognized his fidelity to principles under trying circumstances by appointing him to a Cuban consulship. In 1878, he went to San Diego, California, as superintendent of the Chinese exclusion law. There, on the 17th of December, 1893, at the age of sixty-two the general was killed by the accidental discharge of a revolver.

Datus E. Coon was born in New York in 1831. When the war broke out he was a resident of Mason City, Iowa.

Source: Brigham, Johnson. Iowa : its history and its foremost citizens. Chicago : S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1916. Transcribed by Jennifer Gunderson (Mar 2021).

Index of bios from Iowa : Its history and Its Foremost Citizens
 

Cerro Gordo Biographies maintained by Lynn Diemer-Mathews.
WebBBS 4.33 Genealogy Modification Package by WebJourneymen