Tatum, Lawrie

Lawrie Tatum was born on May 22, 1822 near Mullica Hill, New Jersey. At the age of nine, Tatum¿s parents, George and Lydia, moved the family to Goshen, Ohio, where Tatum remained until setting out for the territory of Iowa at the age of 22 in the summer of 1844. Initially Tatum taught school in Henry County, but soon settled in Cedar County, and has been identified as the first Quaker settler in the county. In the fall of 1847 he returned to Ohio, and married Mary Ann Dean from the town of Winona in February 1848. Returning to his land in Iowa near the settlement of Springdale, the Tatums raised a family that included four sons and one daughter. During the following years, Tatum was active within the Society of Friends, helping establish the Red Cedar Meeting, and he served the church in a variety of posts. In 1869, under President Ulysses S. Grant¿s policy of selecting Quakers to fill various Indian Agency posts, Tatum was chosen to serve as Indian Agent among the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache at Fort Sill in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Tatum remained in this post until March 1873, and his experiences there provided the material for his 1899 book, ¿Our Red Brothers.¿ Upon Tatum¿s return to Iowa, he continued farming his land near Springdale, which he eventually transferred to his youngest son William in 1883. As an active leader among the Friends in Cedar County, Tatum was also chosen in 1884 to be the guardian of the three orphaned children of West Branch residents Jesse and Hulda Hoover¿Theodore, Mary, and Herbert. Even after the future President and his siblings were sent away from West Branch to live with other relatives, Tatum maintained records showing how the funds from their parents¿ estates were spent on the children until they each came of age in the 1890s. Lawrie Tatum died in Springdale, Iowa on January 22, 1900.