EDWARD CAIN.

EDWARD CAIN.—Among the pioneers of Allen county who have performed an active and honorable part in the upbuilding of the municipality is Edward Cain. He settled on Deer Creek, in what is now Carlyle township, April 10, 1858, and homesteaded the northeast quarter of section 10, township 24, range 18, which tract he afterward covered with a land warrant. Among the settlers along the creek then were Isaiah Brown, Alfred Decker and Lew Edmundson, well remembered by their few remaining contemporaries, and all of whom have passed to the great beyond.

Ed. Cain brought an amount of funds into the county with him sufficient to provide himself with two yoke of cattle and to sustain himself through the first season. With the oxen he broke prairie—aided by Thos. A. McClelland—at two dollars and fifty cents per acre. In August 1861, he left the plow and enlisted in the Union army to aid in repressing the Southern Confederacy. He joined Company F, Eighth Kansas, under Colonel John A. Martin and served on the frontier till March 1863, when the regiment was ordered east and placed in General Wood's corps. Mr. Cain participated in the battle of Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, where he was wounded and put off of the firing line for three months but never left his regiment. He was on the Atlanta campaign and fought in the engagement at Lovejoy Station on the last day of his enlistment. He was discharged at Louisville, Kentucky, December 1864, and at once returned to his Kansas claim.

Mr. Cain took up in earnest the improvement and cultivation of his farm. Whereas he had it partially fenced when he entered the army, when he returned to it the settlers had borrowed his fence and had carried off all his temporary improvements. He gathered in a few cattle as he became able and was soon in the stock business. His farm and his stock have enabled him, from time to time, to increase his acreage until he owns a half section of land, the result of years of industry and persevering effort. For many years. Mr. Cain has been one of the prominent shippers of stock from the Iola yards and the money he has thus distributed among the farmers amounts to a fabulous sum.

Edward Cain was born in Coshocton county, Ohio, October 3, 1834. His father, Watson Cain, went into Ohio from Kentucky, where he was born, at an early date. He was accompanied by his father, Orrin Cain, who was a pioneer farmer in the Buckeye state. Watson Cain grew up in Coshocton county, Ohio, married there Sarah Miller, and in 1856 went to

Clinton county, Indiana. He cleared up a farm and both he and his wife died there. Their children were: Edward; Elizabeth, wife of Mr. Golliver, of Independence, Iowa; Malony, wife of Lewis Cass, of Clinton county, Indiana; Henry and George, of the same county; Charles Cain, of Elwood, Indiana, and Maggie, deceased, wife of Andrew McIntyre.

Ed. Cain was first married in Allen county, Kansas, August 10, 1866, to Martha Wright who died in 1875, in March, at the age of twenty-eight years. She left three children, namely: Minnie, wife of John Gregg, of Allen county; Charles Cain, and Sadie, wife of Bert Wiggins, of Allen county. In 1877 Mr. Cain married in Troy, Ohio, Sarah Iddings whose birth occurred in Bethel, Ohio. She is a daughter of Rev. Moses Warden.

Mr. Cain's education was acquired in the country schools, attending three months in the year. Forgetting in nine months much of what he learned in three, the next year he would repeat and in this way he managed to get the rudiments of an education by the time he reached man's estate. Experience has been his best teacher but with the two his competition with the world of barter and trade has yielded amply for himself and family.

In politics the early Cains were Democrats. The events of the Civil war period made a Republican of our subject and, even before that struggle began, he voted for John C. Fremont, In politics as in everything else Ed. Cain is always reliable and always honorable.

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