Dougherty, John

Born: 1806-05-02 Dutch Creek, Ohio

Died: 1879-09-02 Jonesboro, Illinois

After the death of his father, Dougherty settled in Illinois with his mother. He was a teacher and a miner before entering the practice of law in Jonesboro, Illinois. He married Katherine James on March 5, 1829, in Union County, Illinois. For a time he owned the Union County Democrat; and he was a Democrat who served Union County in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1832-35, 1836-38, 1840-42, and 1857-58 and in the Illinois Senate from 1842-1848. In 1850, he was an attorney living in Jonesboro, Illinois, with real estate valued at $4,000. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Illinois state treasurer, was an anti-Douglas Democrat, and supported James Buchanan in 1856. In 1860, he owned $25,000 in real property and $4,000 in personal property.

Gravestone, Jonesboro Cemetery, Jonesboro, IL; Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 256, 268, 282n, 289, 335, 354, 410, 498; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Union County, 5 March 1829, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Jonesboro, Union County, IL, 231; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 3, Jonesboro, Union County, IL, 172; John Y. Simon, "Union County in 1858 and the Lincoln-Douglas Debate," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 62 (Autumn 1969), 277; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 111; George Washington Smith, The History of Southern Illinois (Chicago: Lewis, 1912), 1:255, 259.