L. T. LINNELL, banker, real estate, etc., Cobden. Among the live, wide-awake business men of the county may be classed the subject of this sketch. He was born in the State of New York February 13. 1839, and is a son of Samuel and Mahala (Mitchell) Linnell, also natives of New York, who emigrated to Illinois in 1848, locating at Rockford, where Mrs. Linnell died the next year. She was the mother of seven children, but three of whom are now living, viz.: Levi and our subject, and one daughter, Laura, the wife of Joel Campbell, a prominent grain dealer of Monticello, Iowa. After the death of his wife some years, Mr. Linnell married Caroline Thorn. He was a Whig; is a Republican. Subject received his education in the common schools of the country, and in the Academy at Delton, Wis., where his parents had removed from Rockford, Ill., and where he remained four years, finishing up with one year at Wayland University, at Beaver Dam, Wis. He commenced teaching at the age of seventeen years, a profession in which he proved very successful, and which he continued to follow until the storm of war burst upon us in the spring of 1861, when he enlisted in Company E, Twelfth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, as Second Lieutenant. He was subsequently promoted to First Lieutenant, and assigned as Ordnance officer, and as Assistant Quartermaster of the Third Division of the Seventeenth Army Corps, which position he filled until mustered out of the service, in December, 1864. He came to Cobden the next year and bought a small farm near town, which he cultivated for two years, and then went to Battle Creek, Mich., for his health, but returned here in a short time and bought a drug store in Cobden. Soon after he took in as a partner Dr. J. F. McLoney; he withdrew in 1877, and the next year our subject sold out and turned his attention exclusively to banking and real estate, in which he had been more or less engaged for some time. He now carries on a large banking and real estate business, and may very justly be ranked among the solid men of the community. In March, 1873, he was appointed Postmaster of Cobden, and still holds the position; is also a member of the Board of Town Trustees; he was married in 1864 to Miss Isabel A. Lougley. The result of this union was six children, viz.: B. McPherson, Lewis M., Grace, Florence, Gertrude and Raymond; the two latter deceased. Mr. Linnell served in Gen. McPherson's Corps during the war, and was in the battle of Atlanta, when this officer was killed; was a great admirer of the brave and gallant General. He cast his first Presidential ballot for Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, also 1864, while in the field — his entire company voting the Republican ticket.
Extracted 26 Apr 2020 by Norma Hass from 1883 History of Alexander, Union, and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part V, page 134.
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