S. L. CARY
                         Jennings, LA.
                      Parish of Calcasieu


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Source: Southwest Louisiana and Biographical and Historical by
William Henry Perrin published in 1891;  page 145.

Contributed by Margaret Moore                         



S. L. Cary, Northern Immigration Agent for the Southern Pacific 
Railroad Company, was born in Boston, Erie county, New York, 
February, 1827. He is the son of V. R. and Sophia (Streeter) Cary, 
natives of New York, whence they removed to Freeport, Ill., in 
1852, where Mr. Cary engaged in farming.  From that place he 
removed to Iowa, 1858, locating in Howard county, where he 
purchased land and farmed for a short while. In 1863 he returned 
with his wife to Freeport, Ill., where he remained until his 
death, 1888. Mrs. Cary died in Cresco, Iowa, 1887. Both were 
active members of the Methodist church.  
The subject of this sketch is the oldest of a family of three
children. His brother, John W., is now a resident of Fort Scott,
Kansas, and his sister Udoria, wife of H. C. Vanlouven, editor of
the Vidette; of Spring Valley, Minn. The subject of our sketch
received a good business education, and at the age of twenty-one
he began a mercantile business in Chautauqua county, New York. He
was here engaged for four years. He married, at the age of
twenty-two, Miss Sally J. Medberry, daughter of David J.
Medberry, of New York. They became the parents of one son and one
daughter. Both died in infancy. In 1853 Mr. Cary sold his 
mercantile interests in New York and removed to Fleeport, Ill., 
where he engaged in farming and clerking until 1856, when he 
went to Forest City, Iowa, and resumed the mercantile business. 
Here he remained until 1883, when he removed to Jennings, La., 
and took a homestead and tree claim where the town of Jennings 
is now situated. He now owns fifteen hundred acres of land near
this place, three hundred of which are improved and one hundred 
cultivated in rice. He has been Northern Immigration Agent for
the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, with an office at 
Manchester, Iowa, for several years. Mr. Cary had charge of 
the two exhibits at Sioux City Corn Palace, Sioux City, Iowa. 
He is now doing all in his power to getup a creclitable 
exhibition of Louisiana products for the World's Exposition 
at Chicago, Mr. Cary has been instrumental in inducing much of 
the immigration to Ellis place, and has been known as the Joshua 
of the Iowa colony, he being the first Northern settler in this 
location, where there are now ten thousand people, nearly all 
from the North. Mr. Cary's first wife died in Freeport, Ill., 1853.
He afterward married Clara F. Daniels, of Dearborn, Mich.,
by whom he has had five children, four sons and one daughter.