During the 1820s, increasing numbers of steamboats were beginning to arrive from New Orleans....
Robert Cloud was born on May 4, 1844, in Marshall County, Mississippi. At the age of sixteen, Cloud went to Arkansas and enlisted in Company E, Tenth Arkansas Regiment. He was quickly afterwards taken out of service by his father on account of his youth.
In 1862 he again joined the Confederate Army with Company E, Thirty-fourth Mississippi, and participated in the battles of Farmington, Perryville and Lookout Mountain, where he was captured in November, 1863. He was kept in prison at Rock Island for eighteen months, finally being exchanged at Acklin's Landing, at the mouth of Red River in May, 1865. Robert Cloud returned to his birthplace where he engaged in the confectionery business for one year, and later on in the drug business.
In 1869 he moved to Tuscumbia, engaged in the drug business on West Main Street for over twenty years. Robert Cloud became one of the most prosperous and influential businessmen in Tuscumbia. Described as a “wide-awake, public-spirited citizen” who always took an active interest in the development of the country and in the welfare of his community.
In Tuscumbia, Robert Cloud served the people as alderman, county treasurer, and Tuscumbia postmaster for two terms. He died two weeks after his 91st birthday in 1935 and is buried in Tuscumbia’s Oakwood Cemetery.
