Mack, Alonzo W.

Born: 1822-XX-XX Moretown, Vermont

Died: 1871-01-04 Chicago, Illinois

Alonzo W. Mack was a physician, clerk, lawyer, banker, and military officer. He received an education in Vermont, then moved West at age sixteen, settling in Schoolcraft in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. He soon took up the study of medicine, and, at age twenty-two, graduated at Laporte, Indiana. He returned to Kalamazoo County and began practicing medicine. He remained in the county for thirteen years, also serving as clerk of Schoolcraft township in 1847. In 1849, he married Mary Ann Willard. He eventually relocated to Kankakee, Illinois, where he engaged in banking and began practicing law. A Republican, Mack won election to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1858 and, in 1860, ascended to the Illinois Senate. He served in the Illinois General Assembly for a total of five consecutive sessions, 1858 to 1868. By 1860, he owned $10,000 in real estate and another $60,000 in personal property. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he organized the Seventy-Sixth Illinois Regiment and became colonel of the regiment in August 1862. Mack resigned from service in January 1863 and relocated to Chicago in 1865.

History of Kalamazoo County, Michigan (Philadelphia, PA: Everts & Abbott, 1880), 514; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois: Cook County Edition (Chicago: Munsell, 1905), 1:348; Michigan, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1822-1940, 9 August 1849, Van Buren County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Kankakee, Kankakee County, IL, 43; Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Official Army Register of the Volunteer Force of the United States Army for the Years 1861, ’62, ’63, ’64, ’65 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865), 6:334; Chicago Evening Journal (Chicago, IL), 5 January 1871, 4:2; Gravestone, Limestone Cemetery, West Kankakee, IL.