CEPHALUS BLACK

(From the History of Callaway County Missouri, 1884, page 817-818)
Transcribed by Kris Breid, 29 March 2008

CEPHALUS BLACK, farmer and stock raiser. Cephalus Black, a leading agriculturalist and prominent citizen of Liberty township, was born in Platte City, Missouri, June 12, 1844, and was a son of William E. and Mary A. (Campbell) Black, who came out to Platte county from Virginia, in an early day. When Cephalus was a lad ten years of age, however, his parents returned to Virginia, and excepting the years 1856-1857, were there until two years after the Civil War. The son was given good educational advantages as he grew up, and when the war broke out in 1861, was at Alleghany College, taking his final course of study. Though only seventeen years of age, he promptly quit college when the opening ball of the war was fired, and volunteered as a private in King’s Battalion, Field Artillery, of the Southern service. He followed the flag of the South through the whole four years, undergoing all the vicissitudes—camp life, forced marches, short rations, poor clothes, sickness, wounds, imprisonment—everything, in fact, incident to the struggle for Southern independence. He participated in numerous hard-fought battles, and was appointed from the ranks to the position of sergeant-major. He was wounded at Cold Harbor, and was wounded and taken prisoner at Winchester. Escaping, after a short confinement, by crawling three miles on his hands and knees, he rejoined Early, and was careful not to fall into the generous hospitality of the enemy again during the war. After the war, Mr. Black took a course in the Jefferson Medical College, at Philadelphia, but not with a view to practicing medicine.

In 1867 he came back to Missouri with his parents, who returned to this State at that time, and settled permanently. Here he engaged in farming, and on the 28th of April, 1870, he was married to Miss Susan E. Offutt, a daughter of Judge Basil Z. and Mary E. (Henderson) Offutt, both of whom died when she was only six years old. She was born in Audrain county, November 25, 1847, and is the only one of the family now living. It is proper here to remark that Mr. Black is not related in the least to Cephalus of Attica, the son of Deion. On the contrary, he was named for a different man altogether, for Cephalus, the Athenian orator, and the first speaker to make use of an exordium and peroration, the latter of which this sketch must soon approach. Mr. Black located on a farm near Centralia, in 1875, where he lived eighteen months. He then returned to near the Callaway line, in Audrain county, and in 1880 located on his present farm. Here Mr. Black has one of the finest stock farms in the township. His place contains 720 acres, all in a body. He follows stock raising exclusively, including cattle, of which he has a large herd, and sheep, having also an unusually large flock, and hogs. He has besides, an exceptionally fine herd of Herefords, of the raising of which he makes a specialty. At the Mexico fair, of September, 1883, he took a $75 premium on ten half-blood calves, and also another premium on his colt, “Black Squirrel.” Mr. and Mrs. Black have two interesting little daughters; Eva P. and Mary E. Mrs. B. is a member of the Presbyterian church at Concord.

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