Knapp, Moses L.

Born: 1799-XX-XX Connecticut

Died: 1879-XX-XX Mexico

Flourished: Springfield, Illinois

Moses L. Knapp was in the first graduating class of Jefferson Medical College (1826), and his thesis describing the properties of Indian hemp was the first publication by the school. Around 1836, he moved to Illinois, where he became a prominent landowner in the area of Sangamon County that, in 1839, became parts of Logan and Menard counties. He was one of the original proprietors of the property on which the Postville Courthouse was constructed--a building in which Abraham Lincoln tried cases. He also owned property in Mount Pulaski Township, Middleton, West Lincoln Township, and Chester Township. After the Panic of 1837 depressed land values, he relocated in 1843 to Chicago, Illinois, where he became a member of the first faculty of Rush Medical College. In 1844, he became a founder and professor at La Porte University Medical Department in Indiana. In 1847, he moved on to help establish a branch of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Rock Island, Illinois. In 1848, this school moved to Iowa, eventually becoming part of the State University of Iowa, and in 1852, Knapp left the school and opened a medical practice in Covington, Kentucky. Besides teaching and practicing medicine, Knapp wrote several medical treatises on subjects ranging from epidemic cholera to nursing sore mouth.

Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Logan County, 69:78, 124, 142; 70:3; Menard County, 69:143, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Lawrence B. Stringer, History of Logan County Illinois (Chicago: Pioneer, 1911), 1:120, 122, 562, 612; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward I, Chicago, Cook, IL, 339; "Chapter 4-Alumni Who Founded Medical Colleges," 119-38 (2009) Legend and Lore: Jefferson Medical College, Paper 5, 121-22, http://jdc.jefferson.edu/savacool/5/.