Dunlap, Robert M.

Born: 1809-08-18 New Hampshire

Died: 1855-09-17 Madison County, Illinois

Flourished: Alton, Illinois

Robert M. Dunlap was a city councilman, bank agent, railroad commissioner, and merchant. He moved to Madison County, Illinois in 1831. Soon after, during the Black Hawk War, he served as a private in the First Illinois Regiment of Mounted Volunteers. Between 1834 and 1835, he purchased 160 acres of land in Madison County for just under $600, and, in October 1835, he married Phoebe Smith. The couple eventually had at least three children together. Dunlap became a prominent member of the Alton community, serving on the city council for the city's First Ward from 1840-1841. In 1847, he worked as a bank agent and, in February, also became one of the commissioners of the Alton and Sangamon Railroad. By 1850, he was working as a merchant. In August 1854, Dunlap lost his wife, a child, and a nephew to an outbreak of cholera. Both he and another one of his children were also afflicted, but recovered.

New Hampshire U.S., Birth Index, 1659-1900 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2013); Isaac H. Elliott, Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 54; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Madison County, 2 October 1835, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Madison County, 343:134, 817:70, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Gazetteer of Madison County (Alton, IL: James T. Hair, 1866), 79, 87; Reports Made to the Senate and House of Representatives, of the State of Illinois, at Their Session Begun and Held at Springfield, December 7, 1846 (Springfield: George R. Weber, 1846), 264; “An Act to Establish a State Road from Springfield to Alton,” 15 February 1847, Laws of Illinois (1847), 106-7; “An Act to Construct a Railroad from Alton, in Madison County, to Springfield, in Sangamon County," 27 February 1847, Private and Special Laws of Illinois (1847), 144-49; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Upper Alton, Madison County, IL, 393; The Alton Weekly Courier (IL), 24 August 1854, 1:3; Illinois, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1786-1998, 21 September 1855, Madison County (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2015).