James H. Woodburn Biography


	This biography is from "Memorial and biographical record; an illustrated
 	compendium of biography, containing a compendium of local biography,
	including biographical sketches of prominent old settlers and 
	representative citizens of South Dakota..." Published by G. A. Ogle & 
	Co., Chicago, 1899. Pages 906-909

	Scan, OCR and editing by Maurice Krueger,mkrueger@iw.net, 1998. 

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JAMES H. WOODBURN. The subject of this personal history is a prominent 
and influential citizen of Wessington Springs township, Jerauld county, 
who is well known as a man of industry and enterprise, besides having 
to his credit an unblemished war record. He was born in 1838, in 
Vermont, of which state his parents were also natives. By occupation 
the father was a farmer and tanner. Our subject was reared in much the 
usual manner of farmers' sons in the Green Mountain state, where he 
attended the common schools and for one term a select school. At the 
age of eighteen, he commenced learning the blacksmith's trade, at which 
he served a three-year-and-a-half apprenticeship. 

Hardly had the echoes from Fort Sumter's guns died away when Mr. 
Woodburn offered his services to the government to assist in potting 
down the rebellion, enlisting in 1861, in Company F, First Vermont 
Cavalry, which was sent to Virginia. He participated in the second 
battle of Bull Run, and was all through the campaign in the Shenandoah 
Valley, and the Peninsular campaign, and in the engagements at Fair 
Oaks, Antietam, the Wilderness and around Richmond and Petersburg. He 
was only two rods from General Early when that commander was taken 
prisoner, and was within a quarter of a mile of General Lee when he 
surrendered his sword to General Grant. He was a member of General 
Custer's command, and when his first term of enlistment expired he re-
enlisted and remained in the service until after the close of the war, 
his regiment being sent to the frontier of Canada where they did guard 
duty for a month after hostilities ceased in the south. For meritorious 
conduct on field of battle he was made sergeant of his company, and 
with that rank was mustered out. 

Mr. Woodburn then followed his trade at Ludlow, Vermont, until 1883. 
The year previous he married Miss Gertrude Peabody, a native of 
Andover, Vermont, whose father was a farmer, and to them was born one 
son, Merrill Peabody. In 1883 they came to Jerauld county, South 
Dakota, and located at Wessington Springs, where Mr. Woodburn built the 
first hotel in the township. He continued it for two years and then his 
partner had charge of it until it was destroyed by fire in 1888, while 
he worked at his trade. He then remodeled what is now the Woodburn 
House and engaged in hotel keeping for a year and a half, when his 
wife's health failed and she returned east to her old home in Vermont, 
where her death occurred. 

Since then, in 1896, Mr. Woodburn has located on his farm in Wessington 
Springs township, where he owns seven hundred and sixty acres, of which 
one hundred acres are now under cultivation. This is the largest farm 
in this section of the county and is mostly devoted to stock raising, 
of which Mr. Woodburn makes a specialty. He has witnessed almost the 
entire development of this region, as the village of Wessington Springs 
contained only three or four shanties when he located there. He is an 
ardent Republican in politics and has most creditably and acceptably 
filled the offices of marshal and township trustee. Socially he is an 
honored member of the Grand Army of the Republic. A portrait of Mr. and 
Mrs. Woodburn appears on another page.