Dodge, Abram R.

Born: 1810-XX-XX Ohio

Died: 1854-08-24 Syracuse, New York

Flourished:

Dodge migrated to Illinois in 1835, settling in Aurora. In 1837, he moved with his family to the settlement of Little Rock in Kane County. Dodge later moved south to the border of Kane and LaSalle counties. Dodge became an attorney and prominent member of the Loco Foco faction of the Democratic Party. In August 1840, voters in La Salle County elected Dodge as a Democrat to the Illinois House of Representatives. During his time in the House, Dodge worked unsuccessfully to prevent the formation of Kendall County out of Kane and LaSalle counties. Though a candidate for re-election in 1842, voters did not return Dodge to Springfield for a second term. Dodge returned to Kendall County, settling in Oswego, where he became a prominent attorney. When the United States declared war on Mexico, Dodge raised a militia company in response to President James K. Polk's call for volunteers. The volunteers named Dodge captain of the company, and he accompanied his men to Alton, but illness prevented him accompanying the unit to Mexico. By 1850, Dodge was living in DuPage County with his wife, Susannah, and working as an attorney with real estate valued at $1,000. Dodge later relocated to St. Anthony Falls, Minnesota Territory. The disease contracted while Dodge was in the army broke his health, and he died from complications associated with the unknown malady.

History of La Salle County, Illinois (Chicago: Inter-State, 1886), 1:219, 256, 353; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), DuPage, Dupage, IL, 7-8; Edmund W. Hicks, History of Kendall County, Illinois (Aurora, IL: Knickerbocker & Hodder, 1877), 221-22; Daily Union (Washington, DC), 26 September 1854, 3:4; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, ed., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Kendall County (Chicago: Munsell, 1914), 2:754; "Abram R. Dodge: Another of History’s Mysteries," historyonthefox, accessed June 18, 2018, https://historyonthefox.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/abram-r-dodge-another-of-historys-mysteries/.