Phelps, Salmon A.

Born: 1817-06-02 Otsego County, New York

Died: 1914-05-29 Greenville, Illinois

Flourished: Bond County, Illinois

Salmon A. Phelps was a teacher, farmer, attorney, justice of the peace, Republican, and Presbyterian. He grew up on the family farm in New York. At age ten, he moved to Cooperstown, New York with his father and began attending school. In 1831, he attended school in Bloomfield, New Jersey, then, in 1834, entered Union College in Schenectady, New York. After graduating as valedictorian of his class in 1838, he began teaching in Steubenville, Ohio. He later taught in Woodville, Mississippi for a year while studying law. He was admitted to the bar in Mississippi in 1841. That year, he married Hannah H. Bulkley and had one son with her before she died in 1843. In 1844, he moved to Pocahontas, Illinois. He owned and worked a farm there and practiced law in nearby Greenville. In 1845, he married his first wife’s sister, Caroline Bulkley, with whom he eventually had four children. He served as a justice of the peace for Bond County for twelve years, and also worked as an attorney for the Vandalia Railroad Company. By 1850, he owned $3,500 in real estate. In 1855, he moved to Greenville, where he practiced law until well after the Civil War. By 1860, he owned $6,000 in real and personal property.

Will C. Carson, Historical Souvenir of Greenville, Illinois (Effingham, IL: LeCrone Press, 1905), 65, 68; Portrait and Biographical Record of Montgomery and Bond Counties, Illinois (Chicago: Chapman Bros., 1892), 167-68; U.S., Presbyterian Church Records, 1701-1970 (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Pocahontas, Bond County, IL, 409; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Greenville, Bond County, IL, 199; Tombstone Inscriptions Found in the Cemeteries in Bond County, Illinois (Greenville, IL: Bond County Historical Society, 1970), 4:95.