McNeill, Francis A.

Born: 1809-01-01 Virginia

Died: 1872-02-03 Ogle County, Illinois

Flourished: 1840-1846 Sangamon County, Illinois

Alternate name: McNeal

A physician and Methodist preacher, McNeill ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate for the Illinois House of Representatives in 1842. Around 1846, he moved from Sangamon County to Peoria, Illinois, where he helped to establish the city's first Odd Fellows lodge and was involved in the formation of the state medical society. By 1860, McNeil had relocated his family to Ogle County, where he was a practicing physician with $1,000 worth of real estate. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he served a short period as a surgeon in the Thirty-Fourth Illinois Infantry.

U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Sangamon County, IL, 8; Abraham Lincoln to Joshua F. Speed; Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 365; Abraham Lincoln to John J. Hardin; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Peoria County, ed. by David McCulloch (Chicago: Munsell, 1902), 2:422; O. B. Will, "A Chapter on the Pioneer Period of Medicine in Illinois," Bulletin of the Society of Medical History of Chicago 1 (October 1911), 40; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ogle County, IL, 520; Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Gravestone, Oakwood Cemetery, Mount Morris, IL.