McDowell, James

Born: 1803-XX-XX Virginia

Died: 1868-03-11

In 1836, McDowell settled in Wabash County, Illinois, where he was a merchant and practiced law. He was an active Whig, and in 1844, he served as a vice president of a party convention in Vandalia. In September 1845, he attended the Wabash Improvement Convention, which was a meeting organized to promote the navigation of the Wabash River. For several years he was a probate judge, and he was an elder in the Friendsville Presbyterian Church. In 1860, he lived with his wife Elizabeth and four children in Mount Carmel, Illinois, where he was a lawyer with $7,500 in real property, with a personal estate of $7,500.

Gravestone, Sand Hill Cemetery, Mount Carmel, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Mount Carmel, Wabash County, IL, 385; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Mount Carmel, Wabash County, IL, 90; Sangamo Journal (Springfield, IL), 8 August 1844, 3:3; 16 October 1845, 3:2-3; Combined History of Edwards, Lawrence and Wabash Counties, Illinois (Philadelphia: J. L. McDonough, 1883), 132, 192.