Lewis Baldwin Parsons
CITY:
Flora
COUNTY:
Clay
DEDICATED BY:
Clay County Civil War Round Table and The Illinois State Historical Society
DEDICATION DATE:
January 1, 1986 at 6:00:00 AM
The marker is located north of Flora and just south of US 50 and US 45 and their intersection with North Stanford Road. It is on the north edge of the parking lot for Floyd Henson School.
Near this site was the home of Brevet Major General Lewis B. Parsons, who lived in Flora from 1875 until his death in 1907. Born in New York in 1818, Parsons graduated from Harvard Law School and began practice in Alton, Illinois. In 1854 he moved to St. Louis, where he became president of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad. During the first year of the Civil War, Parsons was commissioned captain of the volunteers in the Union Army. In 1861 he was given charge of river and rail transportation in the Department of the Mississippi and in 1864 was placed in charge of river and rail transportation for the entire army.