Lafayette D. Rose, a veteran of the 27th USCI, requested in his will that “If for any reason I shall be unable to complete the writing and publication of my history at work now well under way I here by request and designate my said wife and my half brother William H. Sparrow to take charge of the same and carry out my arrangements provisions or agreement I may have made with other parties for the same… As soon as sufficient number of copies of my said work or book shall have been sold to pay the cost of publication and sale there of then as to all subsequent sales my said wife shall be entitled to receive a royalty.”
Born in Nelson County, Virginia, by 1850 he and his family resided in Pike County. He moved many times in Ohio over the years, it appears to find work. In his pension application in 1883 he shared his many occupations: farm laborer, cooper, foundry worker, and hod and brick carrier. In 1860 he went to Portsmouth, Scioto County, but returned to Pee Pee, Pike County, that November. After the war he went to Ross County, then Wilmington, Clinton County, and in 1890 he lived in Findlay, Hancock County. Soon after he bought a home in Clyde, Sandusky County, where he died on October 20, 1897.
Although his obituary states that he was survived by one child, he does not mention any children in his will. He does though discuss a “patent ironing board which I now own I refer entirely to my said wife and half-brother William H. Sparrow to manufacture and dispose of as may seem best the proceeds to be devoted to the discharge of my debts.” He filed his patent application from South Carrollton, Kentucky.
Rose was married several times. He wed Lucinda Finley in 1856 in Fayette County, Ohio, then one year later he entered matrimony with Ellen Gooden in Scioto County. His wife at his death was Cecelia Barbarro, whom he married in 1885 in Saginaw, Michigan.
What did his wife Cecelia and half-brother William H. Sparrow do with Rose’s history of his life? It would be a most interesting read. Despite a 1902 pension agent’s report, “from things the witnesses have said it would appear that, not withstanding his ministerial occupation, soldier was rather a bad egg,” it would be a most interesting read.