Timothy Cole Biography


	This biography appears on pages 228-229 in "History of Dakota 
	Territory" by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. V (1915) and was 
	scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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				TIMOTHY COLE. 

	Timothy Cole, living retired at Tyndall, is well known throughout 
Bon Homme county and that section of the state. He and his three 
brothers and sister, Mrs. Bridget Cogan, were among the first settlers 
in Old Bon Homme and were among the most influential residents of their 
county for many years. Timothy Cole was born at Newark, New Jersey, 
October 22, 1845, and his parents, Bernard and Catherine Ann 
(McCormack) Cole, were born near Castlereagh, County Roscommon, 
Ireland. They emigrated to America in the early '40s, embarking at 
Liverpool on a sailing vessel bound for New York which required 
thirteen weeks and three days to make the trip. Mr. Cole found work at 
Newark, New Jersey, and passed away there about 1850. Five or six years 
later his widow brought her family west and two of the boys went to 
Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to make their home with a wealthy bachelor uncle, 
Colonel Bartholomew Cole, a veteran of the Mexican war. But the boys 
rebelled at the latter's strict discipline and the arrangement was soon 
terminated. The mother then came west and lived for a time in Milwaukee 
and then in Beaver Dam and Winnebago, Wisconsin, still later in 
Dubuque, and after that she established her home half way between 
Clarksville and Hannibal, Missouri, where the family was living at the 
opening of the Civil war. Bernard and Timothy served during the greater 
part of the conflict. At the beginning of the war Timothy was too young 
for service on the battle line and therefore enlisted in the Third 
Missouri State Cavalry, a militia organization, but later became a 
member of the Forty-ninth Missouri Infantry, under Colonel D. P. Dyer, 
now a well known member of the St. Louis bar. Bernard and Timothy Cole 
saw active service in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and 
participated in one of the last engagements of the war, the siege of 
Spanish Fort. Following the war the family removed to Dakota territory, 
where Bernard Cole had previously established himself as a blacksmith 
in the old town of Bon Homme. Upon his arrival in the territory in 
1868, Timothy Cole established a wood yard four or five miles east of 
Bon Homme. At the end of a year he returned to Missouri and remained 
two or three years when he again came to South Dakota and filed on a 
homestead claim on section 26, Cleveland precinct, which remained his 
home until March, 1909, when he removed to Tyndall, where he has since 
lived retired. While actively engaged in agricultural pursuits he was 
known as a progressive, alert and energetic farmer and he accumulated 
more than a competence, which enables him to spend his remaining days 
in ease and leisure. 

	Mr. Cole was married in the fall of 1866, in Millwood, Lincoln 
county, Missouri, to Miss Elizabeth Blake, a native of Virginia, whose 
birth occurred in March, 1849. Her parents, Shelton and Fannie 
(Fortune) Blake, emigrated to Jefferson county, Missouri, in 1852 with 
their family and there the father farmed during the remainder of his 
life.. Mrs. Cole attended the high school of St. Louis and Guardian 
Angel Academy, where she became a convert to the Catholic faith. Of the 
ten children born to the union of Mr. and Mrs. Cole nine survive, four 
sons and five daughters, who reside in Bon Homme, Charles Mix, Gregory, 
Tripp, Meade and Yankton counties, this state. 

	Mr. Cole is a democrat and staunchly supports the candidates of 
that party at the polls. He and his family all belong to the Catholic 
church and he is a comrade of Springfield Post, G. A. R. He experienced 
all of the hardships and privations that fell to the lot of the early 
settlers in this state, the blizzards in winter, the prairie fires in 
the late summer and autumn, the grasshopper plagues and the isolation 
common to frontier life everywhere. He is held in the highest esteem in 
his community and the honor that is his is richly deserved.