EDWIN P. MINOR.

EDWIN P. MINOR.—The late Edwin P. Minor, of Iola, came to Kansas with the colony of Massachusetts emigrants who settled at Lawrence in 1856 to aid in making this a free state. The Emigration Aid Association of Massachusetts gathered together a party of two hundred and forty-eight people and sent them to Lawrence in 1856 and they were picked up all the way from New England to Chicago. The Minors joined the train in Huron County, Ohio, and the trip was made by rail to Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, and by wagon to Lawrence. Missouri was not a safe state in which to find Free State people on their intended mission to Kansas and, to avoid trouble the company came through Iowa, Nebraska and into Kansas from the north. Mr. Minor was a carpenter and he worked at his trade the first winter in Lawrence and the next season he went onto a farm and made that occupation his business henceforward. In 1859 he went into Greenwood county, Kansas, and took a claim and left it only when he felt it his duty to go into the army. While in the service his wife returned to Ohio and was joined there by her husband after the war ended. They remained some years in the east, returning in 1873, to Kansas, and taking up their residence in Allen county. Mr. Minor resided one-half mile east of Iola for more than twenty years and was engaged in farming and dairying. He sold his farm in 1894 and became a citizen of Iola, dying here in 1899.

Edwin P. Minor was born in Huron county, Ohio, July 16, 1831. He was a son of Cyrus Minor, who went into Ohio early and back to Connecticut and again to Ohio from Hartford, Connecticut, in 1847. Cyrus Minor was a miller and was married to Sarah Hall. They lived in Connecticut until Mr. Minor was sixteen years old and then moved back to Ohio. Their children were: Erastus, of Portland, Oregon; Charles, of Huron county, Ohio; Wallace, of California; Mitchell, of Los Angeles, California; William, of Huron county, Ohio; Lucy, wife of Charles Clark, of Michigan; Olive, wife of James Wilson, Tiffin, Ohio, and our subject.

Edwin P. Minor settled in Ohio in 1847. He learned the carpenter trade at the age of eighteen to twenty-one and became one of the early bridge carpenters on railroad construction in Ohio. He made his trade his support while he remained in the east and followed it periodically in the west. He enlisted in the Fifth Kansas Cavalry the second year of the war and took part in the battles of Pine Bluff, Helena and Dry Wood, among others. He was in the western department and was out three years and three months.

Mr. Minor was married in Huron county, Ohio, May 17, 1851, to Laura, a daughter of Dan Clark. The Clarks were from Litchfield county, Connecticut, and Daniel's wife was Almena Guthrie. In early life he was a teacher but became a wholesale dry goods peddler later, and finally a farmer. Mrs. Minor survives of their household, as does also Oliver Clark, of Lucas county, Ohio. Mr. and Mrs. Minor's children are Ellis, born in 1852, married Eliza Anderson and resides in New Mexico; Hermosa; Frank G., born in 1855, of Denver, Colorado, and Lewis Minor, born 1859, resides in Iola.

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