Laughlin, William (IL State Representative)

Born: 1800-XX-XX Kentucky

Died: 1873-02-10 Mendon, Illinois

Laughlin married Hedessa Forsythe in Kentucky in 1826. They migrated to Adams County, Illinois, with his father and brothers in 1832. He filled many township offices in Mendon township. Voters elected Laughlin as a Democrat to the Illinois House of Representatives, where he represented Adams County from 1840 to 1842. He also represented Adams County in the Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1847. In 1850, he was a farmer with $4,000 in real property. By 1870, he had accumulated $20,000 in real property and $1,000 in personal property.

Kentucky, County Marriage Records, 1783-1965 (Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com, 2016); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Adams County, IL, 327; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Adams County, IL, 9; Journal of the Convention (Springfield: Lanphier and Walker, 1847), 3; The History of Adams County, Illinois (Chicago: Murray, Williamson and Phelps, 1879), 421; David F. Wilcox, ed., Quincy and Adams County: History and Representative Men (Chicago: Lewis, 1919), 2:742; Arthur Charles Cole, ed., The Constitutional Debates of 1847, vol. 14 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, Constitutional Series (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1919), 968; Gravestone, Mendon Cemetery, Mendon, IL; Quincy Whig (IL), 12 February 1873, 2:1.