Strain, James

Born: 1822-03-10 Ohio

Died: 1880-01-25 Kansas

James Strain was an attorney, Republican, and Presbyterian. In 1848, while living in Ohio, he married Nancy Y. Brown. They eventually had six children together. In 1850, he lived in Xenia, Ohio and owned $1,000 in real estate. He relocated with his family to La Salle, Illinois in 1851. In 1854, he served as secretary for La Salle County’s first Republican convention. By 1860, he owned just over $2,000 in real and personal property. He and his family moved to Monmouth, Illinois in 1861. They became active members of the town’s Second United Presbyterian Church. Strain won election to the Twenty-Fourth Illinois General Assembly, serving in the Illinois Senate from 1864 to 1866. He died in Concordia, Kansas.

Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993, 21 June 1848, Preble County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Xenia, Greene County, OH, 23; History of La Salle County, Illinois (Chicago: Inter-State, 1886), 1:267; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), La Salle, La Salle County, IL, 66; The Past and Present of Warren County, Illinois (Chicago: H. F. Kett, 1877), 149; Louis L. Emmerson, ed., Blue Book of the State of Illinois, 1919-1920 (Springfield: Illinois State Journal, 1919), 543-44; Gravestone, Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Concordia, KS; The Kansas Optimist (Jamestown), 13 February 1897, 4:1.