ROBERT PAULL                           GRAVESTONE PHOTO                      

From History of Montgomery County, Kansas, By Its Own People, Published by L. Wallace Duncan, Iola, Kansas, 1903, Pg. 289-290:

ROBERT PAULL

            Three decades in the State of Kansas have transformed the subject of this review into one of the popular and substantial citizens of Montgomery county.  Given a native of Illinois and a veteran of the Civil War, and one has a combination of enterprise and loyalty to country which is a sure guaranty of a good citizen.

            The immediate family history of Mr. Paull begins with his father, John Paull, who was a native of Virginia and settled in Illinois in the early part of the nineteenth century.  Here he married Nancy Potter, who also had come from the State of Virginia.  John Paull was a blacksmith by trade, though he also tilled the soil, and he remained in Illinois until after the Civil War, when he came out to Kansas where he passed the remainder of his days, dying at the age of fifty-nine years.  The wife had died at thirty-eight, after having borne a family of fourteen children.  Robert was the eldest of the family, and there are five other living children.

            Robert Paull was born in Adams county, Illinois, on the 26th of September, 1841, and was reared to know the value of hard labor and the necessity of economy in the home.  He was able to secure a fair education and was about ready to begin life on “his own hook” when “Uncle Sam” through President Lincoln, informed him he was needed to help discipline some of his unruly children.  Loyalty to country being one of the cardinal principles of the Paull family, it was not a difficult thing to secure the consent of the father to become her defender, and Robert was therefore enlisted as a private soldier in Company K, of the Ninety-ninth Illinois Infantry.  In this company he served three long years, years busy with battle and strife and marchings, but years which saved and unified the grandest country on the great round globe.  Mr. Paull was with Grant in the notable siege of Vicksburg and took part in the battles of Champion Hills, Jackson, and many skirmishes.  His regiment was the first to cross the river in the final charge of Vicksburg where he was struck by a spent bullet in the left side.  After Vicksburg, the regiment was sent down into Texas, where, in a small skirmish, Mr. Paull again received a close call, this time on the right side, the bullet remaining on the inside of his shirt.

            At the close of the war, Mr. Paull came out to Kansas on a visit to his father and on his return was joined in marriage with Mary E. Miller, the date being 1867.  He settled on a farm in Pike county, Illinois, which he cultivated until 1873, when he followed the example of his father and came out to Montgomery county.  He settled on an eighty-acre tract three miles northeast of the present town of Havana, and which is a part of the valuable farm of 236 acres he now owns.  Here he has engaged in general farming and his well-tilled acres demonstrates what persistent and intelligent agricultural effort will accomplish in Sunny Kansas.  The small box house he erected on the eighty later was replaced by the commodious and handsome residence in which he now resides, and where he and his wife extend their friends a most cordial welcome.

            Two children have been born to Mr. And Mrs. Paull, a son and a daughter:  Frank L. is in the hotel business in Independence, while the daughter, Nancy, is the wife of Milton Bowersock, a prosperous farmer residing in the neighborhood.

Contributed by Mrs. Maryann Johnson a Civil war researcher and a volunteer in the Kansas Room of the Independence Public Library, Independence, Kansas.