Thomas Cawood, born March 1, 1838, in Daviess County, Indiana, was a distinguished farmer in Hand County, South Dakota. Raised in Missouri after his father’s early death, he enlisted in the Union Army in 1861, serving until the Civil War’s end in 1865, participating in key battles such as Shiloh and Bentonville. After returning to farming in Missouri, Cawood moved to South Dakota in 1883, establishing an 800-acre farm. Active in public service, he served in the state legislature in 1894 and was a committed Republican. He married twice, first to Ellen Starr, and later to Elmira McAtee, raising several children.
Thomas Cawood, one of the honored representatives of the agricultural industry in Hand County, is a native of the state of Indiana, having been born in Daviess County, on the 1st of March, 1838, and being a son of John and Lucinda (Wells) Cawood, who were numbered among the pioneers of that section of the Hoosier commonwealth. They became the parents of four children, all of whom are living at the time of this writing. The subject was born on the pioneer farm of his father, and his early educational training was secured in a subscription school of the primitive sort common to the locality and period. He was but two years of age at the time of his father’s death, and when he had attained the age of eight years his mother removed with her family to Putnam County, Missouri, where he was reared to manhood, still being identified with farming.
When the dark cloud of civil war obscured the national horizon, Mr. Cawood was among the first to indicate his fealty and loyalty to the Union by tendering his services to its defense. On the 1st of September, 1861, he enlisted as a private in Company G, Eighteenth Missouri Volunteer Infantry, and continued in active service until the close of the war, receiving his honorable discharge at St. Louis on the 25th of July, 1865. His command was assigned to the Army of the Tennessee and he took part in many of the most notable battles of the greatest civil war known to history, beginning with the battle of Shiloh and continuing the course of contest until the engagement at Bentonville, North Carolina.
After the close of the war Mr. Cawood returned to his farm in Putnam County, Missouri, where he continued to follow agricultural pursuits until 1883, when he disposed of his interests there and came to Hand County, South Dakota, where he took up three claims of government land, to which he has since added two other quarter sections, so that he is now the owner of a valuable landed estate of eight hundred acres, the property being admirably improved and constituting one of the most attractive places in this section of the state. Mr. Cawood has been actively identified with the management of township affairs from the time of the organization of his township, while in 1894 he was elected to represent his district in the state legislature, in which he served one term, ably upholding the interests of his county and state. In politics, he has ever been staunchly arrayed in support of the principles of the Republican party, having cast his first presidential vote for Abraham Lincoln. He and his wife are valued and zealous members of the Congregational church at Pleasant Valley, and fraternally he is affiliated with Canby Post, No. 12, Grand Army of the Republic, at Miller.
In 1857 Mr. Cawood was united in marriage to Miss Ellen Starr, of Putnam County, Missouri, and they became the parents of three children, namely: John A., who died in 1864; Lucinda, who is the wife of John Millan, of Wessington, South Dakota, and Seigle B., of whom individual mention is made elsewhere in this work. Mrs. Cawood was summoned into eternal rest in 1865, and on the 23rd of February, 1868, the subject wedded Miss Elmira McAtee, who was born and reared in Missouri. Of their seven children, four are living, namely: Emma, Sarah, Minnie, and Mollie. Sarah married T. V. Wallace, of Huron, South Dakota; Minnie is married to W. W. Johnson, of Ames, this state; and Mollie married E. C. Johnson, also of Ames.
Source: Robinson, Doane, History of South Dakota: together with mention of Citizens of South Dakota, [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen, 1904.