Edward Coon, the oldest child of LaFayette and Mary Wells Coon, was born June 26, 1849, at Ashaway, R. I. He had started from his late home in Brookfield, N. Y., to attend the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference at Milton, Wis., but was taken ill on the way, and was cared for at Bethesda Hospital, Hornell, N. Y., where he died early Sabbath morning, August 31, 1929, in the eighty-first year of his age.
There were two other children in his father's family, Samuel Hubbard Coon and George Wells Coon. Samuel died several years ago, but the other brother George, lives at Milton Junction.
The family came to Utica, Dane county, Wisconsin and here Edward grew to manhood. For a time he attended Albion Academy, but a serious injury to his father seemed to require that he take charge of the home farm, a task which he gladly and willingly accepted. It was at Utica that he married Annis Rosetta Burdick, October 14, 1871.
In 1878 or 1879, Mr. Coon migrated with his family to the prairies of what is now South Dakota, taking up government land near Flandreau. While on the farm his wife taught district school, one of the pupils being her own son Fayette B. Coon, now a teacher in the public schools of West Allis, Wis. Their son was with his father at the hospital in Hornell when he died.
The only other child is a daughter, Mary, now Mrs. Archie Woodstock of Otsego, Michigan. There are eight grandchildren.
In 1885 the family returned to southern Wisconsin where Mr. Coon engaged in Mercantile business at various times at Albion, Walworth, Milton and Milton Junction, part of the time farming, and making one more venture in 1908, in pioneering for a period on government land in Montana where they lived for seven years.
His wife died January 31, 1922, in Milton, only a few weeks after they had celebrated the golden anniversary of their marriage. On August 25, 1924, he was married to Mrs. Esle Langworthy Rogers of Brookfield, N. Y. and the home has been in that place for the last few years. Her presence was a comfort to him in his last illness.
At the time of his death he was a member of the Second Brookfield Seventh Day Baptist Church at Brookfield, N. Y., but from 1891 to 1926, a period of thirty-five years, he was a member of the Seventh Day Baptist church at Milton Junction. He lived a consecrated Christian life, and was a staunch loyal observer of the Sabbath, whether in the home church or as a lone Sabbath keeper.
Mr. Coon was deeply interested in matters of public welfare, especially in the cause of temperance. The Good Templars organization, in which for a time he was one of the state officers in Wisconsin, received his ardent support, and this work was one of the things to which his fevered mind often reverted in those last days of his illness. He was a loyal, faithful and always interested member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, holding his membership in the DuLac Lodge, No. 322, at Milton, Wis.
Rev. Edgar D. Van Horn, conducted a brief farewell service on Sabbath Day at the hospital just before the journey for Wisconsin was started and before the wife, worn to exhaustion by the two weeks of constant unremitting care, returned alone to the home in Brookfield.
The service in the Milton Junction S.D.B. church was conducted by Dr. Edwin Shaw, Milton. Music was furnished by Rev. J. F. Randolph, Robert Randolph, Pres. A. E. Whitford, and Henry Ochs. Emmett Crandall, Orville Crandall, John Crandall, R. G. Randolph, Elam Coon and Byron Coon, all of whom resided at Utica when the deceased did, were pall bearers. Burial was in the Milton Junction cemetery.
Those from away who attended the funeral included Prof. Fay B. Coon and family, Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Coon and Prin. and Mrs. Archie Woodstock and children of Otsego, Mich., and Mrs. A. E. Webster of River Forest, Ill.
