S. H. Cockins of Bighorn County, living on a fine ranch of 400 acres on Grey Bull river, there conducting a stock and general farming industry of increasing magnitude and cumulative profit has been twice a soldier in the service of his country, once in the Civil War, when the conflict was marked with carnage and destruction, and since its close a soldier in that army of industrial progress, which has subdued the untamed wilderness of the northwest and brought it to systematic productiveness. In both fields of conquest he has borne himself bravely and has rendered valuable service. He is a native of Ohio, where his life began on February 3, 1838, and where his parents, Vincent and Elizabeth (Wright) Cockins, settled soon after their marriage, having come thither as pioneers of the state from the home of their nativity in Pennsylvania. Mr. Cockins was reared and educated in his native state, and soon after the Civil War broke out he enlisted in Company A, seventy-eighth Ohio Infantry. He saw hard service and was in many important and hotly contested engagements, until he was seriously wounded at the battle of Raymond, Miss., when he was a little later discharged on account of the disability thereby incurred. He returned to his Ohio home and until 1876 was occupied in buying stock and shipping it to various points. Then, attracted by the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and the opportunities for successful business operations it promised in that region, he sold out in Ohio and came to this new Eldorado of the Argonauts, where he passed ten years in prospecting and mining. In 1888 he came to Wyoming and located in the Big Horn Basin, on the Grey Bull River, where he now lives and has had his home continuously since. Here he carries on a flourishing and expanding stock industry, principally handling horses, but having some cattle, all being of good quality and well bred. His ranch is beautifully located and well adapted to its purposes, and has been highly improved by him, the portion under cultivation brought to a state of great fertility and productiveness. Mr. Cockins is energetic in behalf of the best interests of the community, always to be found in active aid of any enterprise conductive of the progress and improvement of the county or of its people. He is highly respected as a representative and progressive citizen, a firm and helpful friend, an obliging neighbor and a genial and entertaining companion. He belongs to and takes great interest in the Grand Army of the Republic, that fast fading embodiment of the memories, the heroism; the triumph and the suffering of the northern side in the War between the Sections of our now reunited country.
