Constant Sweeney Lake (1840-1917)

 

  The second posting for this new year takes us to Iowa and Constant Sweeney Lake, a longtime Marengo resident who was active in Democratic politics in that region. A veteran of the Civil War, Lake served as a delegate from Iowa to the Democratic National Convention of 1880 and six years later was tapped by President Cleveland as U.S. Pension Agent for the districts of Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakota Territory, where he served for four years. A native of Ohio, Constant Sweeney Lake was born in Mansfield on February 14, 1840, the son of Elijah and Susan Crothers Lake.

  A resident of Ohio until age thirteen, Lake removed with his family to Iowa City, Iowa in the early 1850s and here received his education. Desiring a career in law, Lake began study in the office of Edmund and Ransom in 1859, continuing until the outbreak of the Civil War. He enlisted in Co. B., First Iowa Infantry in April 1861 and later re-enlisted in the Eighteenth Iowa Infantry. Sometime later he was transferred to the Twenty-Second Infantry and concluded his service as an adjutant with the Twentieth Iowa Infantry. 

  Constant S. Lake married in the mid-1860s to Sarah Elizabeth Shepherd (1841-1897). The couple's three-decade union produced six children, Bertha Lee (1866-1937), Jessie Louise (1869-1949), C.B., Norma (1872-1951), Lallah (1874-1878), and Pearl (1884-1885).

  Following his war service, Lake resumed his law studies, reading in the office of state representative Rush Clark (1834-1879), of Iowa City. Upon completion, Lake relocated to Marengo in 1866, where he operated a practice with N.B. Holbrook. Sometime later Lake partnered with state senator and future congressman John Nicholas William Rumple (1841-1903), and their firm continued well into the 1880s. In 1880, Lake served as part of the Iowa delegation to that year's Democratic National Convention, journeying to Cincinnati, Ohio where Winfield Scott Hancock was nominated for the presidency.

  In 1886 President Grover Cleveland named Lake as Pension Agent for the districts of Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakota Territory. His appointment was profiled in the Sioux City Journal in April of that year and denotes Lake as "one of the clearest-headed lawyers in the Fifth district", and further notes that he was:

"Universally esteemed as an honorable, open handed, high minded gentleman of education and character. As a democrat he has never faltered, even in the darkest hour of the party's history. He was a delegate from the Fifth district to the national convention, which nominated Gen. Hancock for president, and has been active and influential in state politics." 

 Lake's tenure in the pension office continued until June 1890, when he resigned. He resumed the practice of law in Marengo and continued until the death of his wife Sarah in 1897. Following her death, he resettled in Marion, Iowa, where he lived with his daughter Bertha. He died at her home several days prior to his 77th birthday on February 7, 1917, and was interred alongside his wife at the IOOF Cemetery in Marengo. 

From the Marshalltown Evening Times-Republican, February 9, 1917.

Voranus Lathrop Coffin (1831-1917)

 

Portrait from the Kennebec Journal, January 7, 1897.

  Distinguished on the battlefield as well as in the political arena, Voranus Lathrop Coffin rose to the rank of lieutenant during the Civil War, during which he served time at several Confederate prison camps. Following the close of the hostilities, he made his name in shipbuilding, which he followed for four decades, and served two consecutive terms in the Maine state senate from Washington County. Late in life, he returned to politics with his appointment to the governor's council, and in 1904 was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. Born in Addison, Maine on October 3, 1831, Voranus Lathrop Coffin was the son of Simeon and Rebecca (Nash) Coffin.

  Descended on his father's side from Nantucket, Massachusetts pioneer Tristram Coffin (1609-1681), Voranus Coffin attended the public schools of Addison and Harrington, Maine, and also studied at the Waterville Academy. In September 1855 he married Christina Wilson and had three sons, Charles Augustus (1856-1910), Edwin Voranus (1866-1943), and John Alphonso (1869-1903). He followed a career in education for over a decade, teaching at Addison, Harrington, and Millbridge, and resigned his position in 1863 to help organize the 31st Reg., Maine Volunteer Infantry. Enlisting in Co. B., he was soon elected a second lieutenant and saw action at the Battle of Cold Harbor in 1864, where, after "gallant and meritorious conduct", he was promoted to captain.

  Just days after Cold Harbor, Coffin was on picket duty when he was captured by the Confederates and was soon confined to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. Several weeks later he was transferred to Camp Oglethorpe in Georgia, where he was imprisoned into late 1864. Later he was moved to Savannah and Charleston before being confined to Camp Sorghum in Charleston. In December 1864 he was once more transferred, this time to a prison stockade located at the infamous "Camp Lunacy" Insane Asylum in Charleston. Sometime later he and another Maine prisoner made good their escape from prison, only to be recaptured sixty miles away. After recapture, he was placed in prisons at Raleigh, Goldsboro, and Wilmington, North Carolina, where he was paroled. With his confinement in nine separate Confederate prisons, it was remarked that Coffin had been imprisoned "in more Confederate prisons than any other Union soldier, commissioned or non-commissioned."

   In the last months of the Civil War Coffin rejoined his old unit and in 1865 took part in the "Grand Review" march on Washington. Following his return to Maine Coffin established himself in the shipbuilding trade at Harrington, which he followed for forty years.  A member of the firm Ramsdell, Rumball, and Coffin, he purchased his partner's interest in 1876, and by 1884 the firm was operating under the name V.L. Coffin and Son. This business also saw the development of a general store in Harrington, which continued existence under various owners well into the 20th century.

   Coffin began his political career at the local level, serving Harrington as its town treasurer for thirty-five years. In 1880 he was elected to his first term in the Maine State Senate, and during the 1883-85 session was a member of the committees on Commerce, Ways and Means, and Engrossed Bills. He was also named to the special committee "To Inform the Governor of His Election." Reelected in 1882, Coffin served from 1883-1885 and returned to politics in 1897 with his election to the Maine Governor's Council, a group of seven men who advised the governor on the affairs of state. He served until 1898, and in the next year was appointed as a trustee for the University of Maine, serving until 1906.

Voranus L. Coffin. From Maine, A History, Vol. IV, 1917.

  In 1900 the nearly 70-year-old Coffin was elected as treasurer of his home county of Washington, serving until 1902. In 1904 he served as part of the Maine delegation to the Republican National Convention held in Chicago where Theodore Roosevelt was nominated for the presidency. Active in several Civil War veterans groups, Coffin was a past senior vice commander of the Maine G.A.R. as well as a commander of the Hiram Burnham Post, No. 50, of the G.A.R. As a longstanding Mason, Coffin "held all the degrees of the York Rite, and in the Scottish Rite had attained the 32nd degree." After decades of prominence in Washington County, Voranus Coffin died on November 18, 1917, at age 86. He was preceded in death by his wife in 1914 and was interred at the Forest Hill Cemetery in Harrington. Two years after his passing Coffin was memorialized in volume 4 of Maine, A History, which remembered him as:

"Genial, friendly, and kind, a man to be instinctively liked and trusted. His life was a useful, busy one, and to as great a degree as possible he extended to every man a helping hand."

Wheatley Bigelow Cook (1854-1917)

   Essex County, Vermont resident Wheatley Bigelow Cook takes center stage in today's profile, and sadly very little could be found online in regards to his life history and political service. Although details on his life have proven difficult to come by, a rare portrait of this man was found in a Vermont legislative souvenir that I ordered from Amazon a few days ago.
   As stated in this site's introduction in July of last year, numerous books have come to my rescue in regards to finding information on "so and so" that has a profile here. One type of book that I've found to be especially helpful is called a "legislative souvenir", and contained in these books are short biographies and portraits of every legislator from a particular state. The portrait of Wheatley B. Cook shown above was discovered via the 1905 work entitled Vermont, Its Government which highlighted all of the elected officials serving within the Vermont government for the years 1904-1905. Although this book yielded the rare photo of Cook shown above, it did not yield very much in the way of a biography (quite literally in fact--his "biography" amounted to just five skimpy lines!) In addition to Cook, several other oddly named political figures were found in this book, all of whom will eventually have profiles here on the site at some point!
   Wheatley Bigelow Cook was born on May 8, 1854, in Lancaster, New Hampshire, and attended the "common schools" in the Lancaster area. He is listed as marrying in December  1877 to Ms. Minerva Electa Chamberlain and this marriage lasted over 25 years until her death on July 23, 1903, at age 48. Wheatley and his wife are recorded as having one son, Leslie Bigelow (born 1877) who later became a resident of Rumney, New Hampshire. Cook is recorded as having been involved in the lumber industry for a good majority of his life and won election to the Vermont State House of Representatives in November 1903. 
   During his brief legislative service (1904-1906) Cook represented the town of Canaan in the county of Essex and held a seat on the house committee on Land Taxes. A roster from that particular legislative session is posted below, and one should also note that Cook's fellow representative from Essex County also had a strange name--Orange L. Mansur. Mansur (1849-1921) will have a profile posted here at some point and also has a portrait featured in Vermont, Its Government, 1904-05.

  In the years following his service in the legislature, Wheatley B. Cook served as the Vice President of the William F. Allen Co., an electrical lighting company. Little else could be found on him, with the exception being his death, which occurred on November 4, 1917, in his native town of Canaan. He was subsequently buried alongside his wife Minerva in the Alice Hunt Cemetery in Canaan, Vermont. 

                                                  Vermont, Its Government: 1904-1905.