McCoy, Alexander

Born: 1819-XX-XX Pennsylvania

Died: 1893-02-10 California

Flourished: 1854-09-28 Peoria, Illinois

Alexander McCoy graduated from Washington College in Pennsylvania in 1844, passed the bar in Ohio, and moved to Peoria, Illinois in 1851. Over the course of McCoy's thirty-six years in the law profession, he had numerous law partners, including Henry Grove, Judge Norman H. Purple, Judge Marion Williamson, Lorin G. Pratt, and John S. Stevens. In 1856, he became state's attorney for the Sixteenth Circuit, a position he held for eight years. McCoy married Sarah J. Matthews on October 7, 1857 in Peoria County. In 1860, McCoy and his wife were living in Peoria's Second Ward, and he owned $3,600 in real property with a personal estate valued at $6,400. In 1864, McCoy won election to the Illinois House of Representatives, on the Republican ticket, representing Peoria County. Soon after, he became chairman of the judiciary committee, which made him the leader of the House. McCoy retired from his law practice in 1887 and later moved to California.

John M Palmer, ed., The Bench and the Bar of Illinois: Historical and Reminiscent (Chicago: Lewis, 1899), 1:302; James M. Rice, Peoria City and County Illinois (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1912), 1:375; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Peoria County, 7 October 1857, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 2, Peoria, Peoria County, IL, 192.