Douglass, John M.

Born: 1819-08-22 Plattsburgh, New York

Died: 1891-03-26 Chicago, Illinois

Flourished: 1855 to 1865 Chicago, Illinois

John M. Douglass, attorney, read law in his native Plattsburgh, New York, for three years beginning in about 1836. In 1840, he moved from New York to Illinois, and was admitted to the bar in Springfield the following year. Douglass settled in Galena where he opened a law practice and worked on mining cases. Douglass encountered Abraham Lincoln a couple of times in the Jo Daviess County Circuit Court in the 1840s and 1850s, and the two were both defense attorneys in Hurd et al. v. Rock Island Bridge Co., the so-called Effie Afton case, which was heard in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 1857. About 1855, Douglass moved to Chicago, where he served as counsel for the Illinois Central Railroad. He became a director of the railroad in 1861, and president in 1865. In 1860, he owned real estate valued at $100,000 and possessed $75,000 in personal property. Douglass married Amanda Marshall and was survived by three children. In politics, he was a Democrat.

John M. Palmer, ed., The Bench and Bar of Illinois: Historical and Reminiscent (Chicago: Lewis, 1899), 1:513-14, 2:648-49; William K. Ackerman, Historical Sketch of the Illinois-Central Railroad (Chicago: Fergus, 1890), 131-32; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Galena, Jo Daviess County, IL, 267; Hurd et al. v. Rock Island Bridge Co., Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=137684; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 9, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 132; The Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), 28 March 1891, 2:5; Gravestone, Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum, Chicago, IL.