Freighter and Rancher “Doc” Rankin – A Legend in His Own Time [otd 01/24]

"Doc” Rankin. H. T. French photo.
William Allen “Doc” Rankin was born January 24, 1836, in Lafayette, Indiana. Several ancestors in his paternal line fought in the American Revolution, later being plantation owners in Virginia. Although Doc’s family moved to the Midwest (to Iowa after Indiana), they retained strong family ties to Virginia.

Thus, because his forebears were “old line” Virginians, the young man sympathized with the South during the Civil War. When the war began, Rankin was in Iowa fa...