Alexander and John Latter, Champaign and Coles County

The Urbana Free Library has a small collection of indentures from 1859 and 1860. One of the riders included in that collection is Alexander Latter, who was indentured to Joseph Maxwell, a farmer in Mahomet in 1860. He had a brother, John Latter, who was also at the asylum, and it appears that John Latter was also sent to Illinois just before the Civil War. In 1850 these brothers appeared in the census along with their mother Rebecca Latter, who was a 32 year old Irish immigrant with four children. Only the two youngest, the boys, appear on the rolls of the New York Juvenile Asylum.

Both Alexander and John enlisted during the Civil War, Alexander with the 125th Illinois Infantry in 1863 (later transferred to the 60th) and John in 1864 in Coles County with the 38th Illinois Infantry. After being mustered out in Texas, there is no further trace of John Latter.

Alexander returned to Champaign after his service and wrote this letter to the asylum in 1870:

(The second rider assigned to Maxwell was Samuel Hall, of whom no trace can be found. He was born in 1847.)

In 1870 Alexander was working for J C Kilgore in Middletown, Champaign County, and in 1880 he was on his own farm in Rush County, Kansas, where he would continue to live. He lived with Orestes Robertson and it was noted in the census that while Orestes Robertson could not read, Alexander could. Orestes' obituary explains why Orestes could not read -- he was blind. Alexander and Orestes probably met in Champaign County, where the Robertson family was located in the 1870s. The two men lived together until Robertson's death in 1911. Alexander spent the years after his friend's death disputing the distribution of the estate.

In Rush County Alexander was a GAR member and the post commander for a time. He was buried in the military cemetery at Leavenworth, Kansas after his death in 1927.