SAMUEL R. COLE, one of the leading farmers and stock raisers of Jackson township, was born in Bloomfield, Indiana, August 23, 1845, a son of John and Rachael (Bradford) Cole, natives respectively of Kentucky and Virginia. John Cole came with his parents to Indiana in the early twenties and located near Bloomington, and his mother died there, her husband surviving her until about 1858 and dying at the home of his son. In an early day John Cole located in Bloomfield, Indiana, and for many years he served as a deputy in the court house there. In 1858 he joined a party from Indiana bound for the gold fields of California, and spent about two years in that state and in the overland journeys there and back, and on his return to Bloomfield he engaged in farming.
In November of 1861 John Cole and his son Samuel enlisted in Company D. Fifty-ninth Regiment of Indiana Infantry, for service in the Civil war, and the father served about eight months, while the son continued as a soldier for three years and seven mouths, both participating in the battles of Island No. 10, Benton and Corinth, while the son continued on through the battles of Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Atlanta, serving on the Mississippi most of the time until they moved on to Atlanta. The father was for a time confined in the general hospital at Corinth, and was discharged early in 1862. The son was mustered out at Indianapolis at the close of the war.
After his return from the war John Cole continued farming until 1868, and going then to Nebraska spent the following year in that state, while after his return to Indiana he embarked in the mercantile business at Lyons, remaining there until his death on the 1st of May, 1870. His wife died in about 1879 in Jackson township.
Samuel R. Cole was a young man of twenty when he returned from the war, and from that time until 1873 he farmed on rented land in Greene county. In that year he came to Sullivan county and rented a farm in Jackson township, and about 1879 he added thirty-four acres to the forty acres which belonged to his wife and where they now reside, but he has since sold a part of this tract until the farm now contains but sixty-nine acres. He follows general farming and stock raising, and has been very successful in his operations.
In November of 1860 Mr. Cole married Mary Harrah, who was also born in Bloomfield, a daughter of James and Kissie Harrah, both now deceased, as is also the daughter, who was born in 1845 and died in February, 1873. On the 17th of June, 1875, Mr. Cole wedded Teresa Snowden, who was born in Ireland January 27, 1841, a daughter of Orr and Nancy (Alartin) Snowden, who came to the United States in 1841 and located in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The father preceded the family to this country a short time and engaged in general work, and later he became a miner. In 1853 he came to Sullivan county, Indiana, and bought canal land in Jackson township, where he died in 1879, a week after the death of Mr. Cole's mother. His wife died on the 26th of January, 1889. Mr. Cole gives his political support to the Republican party, and is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and of the Grand Army of the Republic. Both he and his wife are members of the Presbyterian church at Jackson Hill, and he is one of its elders.