Brevet Major General Lewis B. Parsons, born in New York in 1818, graduated from Harvard Law School and began practicing law in Alton, Illinois. In 1854 he moved to St. Louis, where he became president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. During the first year of the Civil War, he was commissioned captain of the volunteers in the Union army. In 1861 he was given charge of river and rail transportation in the Department of the Mississippi, and in 1864 he was placed in charge of river and rail transportation for the entire army. He lived in Flora from 1875 until his death in 1907.