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Lewis Baldwin Parsons (1818-1907) was born in Genesee County, New York, the third of ten children. His father was a merchant and was widely traveled. Parsons graduated from Yale in 1840 and taught at
a classical school in Mississippi before returning to
the Northeast to complete his law degree at Harvard in 1844 and then established himself as a lawyer in Alton, Illinois, as a partner with U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Strong’s brother, Newton D. Strong, and then partnered with Henry W. Billings in 1846. He was the city’s attorney in 1846-1859. In 1847, he married Sarah G. Edwards, the niece of Illinois Governor Ninian Edwards. Their marriage was tragically short as she died in 1850, and he remarried in 1854 to her sister Julia Edwards who also soon died in 1857. Parsons moved across the Mississippi River to St. Louis to work for the banking firm Page & Bacon that financed the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad connecting St. Louis to Cincinnati. The bank folded, but Parsons stayed on working for the railroad and became close friends
with the railroad’s vice president: George B. McClellan. Parsons himself served as the railroad’s attorney as well as their treasurer and president at various times and worked from both Cincinnati and St. Louis. Both cities had long been key ports for the river trade and the battles between the riverboats and the railroad interests.
When the war broke out, Parsons canceled his plans
to go to Europe and served initially as a captain on McClellan’s staff in the Army of the Potomac but sought a more active position in the Quartermaster Department which was well-suited to a man of his talents and business background. Copies of letters
to President Abraham Lincoln from Parsons and his allies seeking an appointment for Parsons in the Quartermaster’s Department are included. One letter from William S. Holman addressed from St. Louis on October 24, 1861, states, “The services of L. Parsons
in the Quarter Masters Department, especially in the West, could not fail to be beneficial to the Government. There is no Gentleman in this section of the Union better qualified by experience, ability, and integrity
to fill such a position and in the West, especially in
this section of it, the Quarter Masters Department imperatively requires it.” In another letter, written by President Lincoln himself on September 17, 1861,
to Secretary of War James Cameron, the president stated: “I personally know Mr. Parsons & have no doubt he would make a good Paymaster, Qr Master, or Commissary.”
Parsons enlisted as a captain and assistant quartermaster on October 31, 1861, at St. Louis, Missouri per his pension records. By December 1861, Parsons was ordered by General Robert Allen to “take charge of all the transportation pertaining to the department of the Mississippi by river and railroad...” Parsons soon proved himself up to the job.