San Diego County Biographies

LEROY W. ALLUM

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 
LEROY W. ALLUM, San Diego�s first assistant Postmaster, is a veteran.  He and 
his father, Mr. Thomas Allum, both enlisted at the beginning of the war.  His 
father enlisted in Company C, Twenty-second Iowa Infantry, but was discharged at 
Vicksburg on account of sickness. He recovered and recruited a company of 
100-day men,  Company D Forty-eighth Iowa, August, 1864.  He was promoted to 
First Lieutenant, and served until the close of the war.  He married Miss 
Matilda A. Allum, a distant relative, of Scotch-English descent, and had a 
family of ten children, of which the subject of this sketch was the third.  The 
family came to Iowa in 1853, and settled in Davenport.  In 1856 Leroy went to 
Hazel Dell Academy, which he left October 2, 1862, at the age of eighteen, to 
enlist in Company C, Twenty-second Iowa, the same company in which his father 
first enlisted.  He went all through the war, and came back without a wound, 
although in many places of great danger.  He was in the following battles:  Port 
Gibson, Champion Hill, Black River, and at the siege of Vicksburg.  It was his 
regiment, under Colonel William M. Stone (afterward Governor of Iowa), that 
planted the flag upon the works, when twenty-eight men were killed in a few 
minutes, and some captured.  They were obliged to withdraw, but they brought the 
colors back with them  Vicksburg was taken the 4th of July following.  After 
this the regiment was in the battle of Jackson, Mississippi, and was in New 
Orleans and Texas, and on the Red River campaign.  They were also in the 
Shenandoah valley, Fish Hill, Cedar Creek and Winchester.  In 1866, he, with his 
bunk and messmate, Thomas M. Rogers, started the Republican, a newspaper, at 
Newton, Iowa, which he continued until 1878, when he moved to Oakland, 
California  where he published the Vidette, a Republican paper (daily and 
weekly), and continued there nine years.
   He was married to Miss Alice G. Israel, daughter of Mr. Mc. C. Israel, a 
merchant of Monroe, Iowa, and has three children, all boys;  Leroy M. born 
November 6, 1875; Ralph L., born September 11, 1878, and Fred M., born August 
11, 1883.  He is a Knight  Templar  in the York rite, and thirty-second degree 
in the Scottish rite Masonry, and is a member of the G. A. R.  He belongs to 
Heintzelman Post, No, 33, of San Diego.

An Illustrated History of Southern California: Embracing the Counties of San 
Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower 
California, from the Earliest Period of Occupancy to the Present Time.... - 
Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890. pp 348 Transcribed by