1882 History of Linn County, Missouri
JOHN C. LOUTHAN

The subject of this sketch is the son of Hiram and Harriet (Hays) Louthan, and was born in Columbiana, Ohio, May 20, 1836. He received fair common school education, and continued with his parents till April, 1861, when he enlisted in Company F, of the Thirty-six Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which regiment was assigned to the Fourteenth Army Corps. During his service in the Union cause, Mr. Louthan participated in the battles of Lewisburgh, Chickamauga, Hoover's Gap, Barryville, Cloud Mountain, Winchester (second battle), Mission Ridge, Lookout Mountain, Bull Run (second battle), South Mountain, and the fight at Antietam, and a number of skirmishes not mentioned, numbering twenty-two in all. He was wounded at the battle of Mission Ridge, though he served as orderly-sergeant during the latter part of his military career.

Mr. Louthan was married in Ohio, to Miss Anna Jane Hadlow. This lady was the daughter of Robert and Jeanette Haddow, and was born in Washington County, Ohio, June 8, 1840. She came to Missouri with her parents, while her husband was still in the service, and at the close of the war he followed them. Mr. Louthan came to this State and county soon after receiving his discharge, in March, 1865, and bought a farm in Enterprise township, where he still resides. He owns two hundred and twenty acres, all under cultivation, and with fair improvements. Mr. and Mrs. Louthan are the parents of seven children, three sons of whom still survive, while two sons and two daughters are dead.

Mr. Louthan is a self-made man, and has accumulated what he has by his own energy and industry.
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John Cope Louthan (1836-1918) -- Oliver's brother, John Cope Louthan, is well known. Born in 1836, he married Anna Jane Haddow in 1863. Not much later, he entered the War Between the States and often told his children of carrying the flag in battle until it was shot to ribbons. H was struck in the foot by shrapnel which was not removed. He carried the metal fragments for the rest of his life.

John returned home and the couple's first child, Edwin Alonzo Louthan, arrived in 1866. John and Anna had seven children, although only three of them reached maturity. Anna died in 1881 and John married again in 1883 to Mary Ann Elizabeth Hale who was 25. They had ten children between 1885 and 1901.

John and Mary Ann moved west to Nashville, Kansas where the first seven children arrived. John then set out for Indian Territory on horseback to find new land. He contested a claim and won it. This property was three miles south and four and a half miles east of Chester, OK in what was Woods County, Oklahoma Territory.

During the spring and summer of 1894, John planted crops and tended them and in the fall returned to Nashville for his family. By this time Eddie, (Edwin Alonzo) and Bertie (Robert Hiram), the two oldest of John's children, had married and started their own families.

John and the family loaded a granary and a chicken house on two wagons and loaded the rest of the household goods along with Sammie (Samuel Oscar), the last of the surviving children of Anna, and the youngest six children ranging from 7 to eight months and headed back to Oklahoma. John drove the wagon with the granary and Mary drove a six horse team hitched to the wagon with the chicken house perched on the rear. The trails were rough and both wagons upset several times along the way. Everyone had to struggle to right them and reload the gear in the middle of the prairie with no one to help.

They arrived at the farm on Christmas Day, 1894 with $27 and a herd of horses. They set up the granary and lived in it surrounded by a grove of trees for three years. Bud, who was Christened Roy, was born there. Later the men went up into some canyons and cut cedar logs to build a cabin which was erected on the north side of the farm. Rosa and Lillie were both born in the cabin with the aid of neighbor ladies who helped with births and sicknesses. Often quinine powder, the only medicine readily available was wrapped in an onion skin to allow it to be swallowed. Indians often passed through the farm and young Jessie, seven when they reached the farm site, would hide under the bed when they stopped to talk and trade.

There was a lot of wild game nearby. Jessie and Pearl helped to refill the shells for their father. Sammie helped his father at the farm until about 1908 when he married. By this time, Charles and John had grown to be young men who took over the chores.

John Cope Louthan had a long beard as long as the family could remember. But it once burned off when John was fighting a prairie fire and his beard caught fire.

The children got two or three months of school a year at the Lakeside School District #59 and this was the system through the fifth grade.

Mary died in 1909 of typhoid along with her youngest child who was eight. John died nine years later and both are buried at Hope Cemetery southeast of Chester, Oklahoma.