Lafayette Holmes was born on January 10, 1834, in Jefferson County, Ohio, to William and Eliza Holmes. His father was a blacksmith who owned $100 of personal property by 1860. According to an early biographer, he spent his childhood in Iowa and California before the family settled in Jo Daviess County, Illinois, around 1846. By 1860, he was working as a store clerk in Galena, Illinois, and he owned $500 of personal property. He married Sarah Jane Lee on August 23, 1860, and they had at least three children: William, born around 1863; Jessie, born around 1868; and Walter, born around 1872. He moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in the early 1860s before settling in La Crosse, Wisconsin. By 1870, he was working as a grocer, and he owned $2,000 of real estate. By 1900, he was serving as city comptroller for La Crosse. A local writer described him as a “much loved citizen” whose “gentle nature made itself apparent wherever he was known.” He died of “locomotor ataxia” in La Crosse on October 19, 1909.

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