Rutledge, David H.

Born: 1815-08-22 White County, Illinois

Died: 1842-06-07 Petersburg, Illinois

The younger brother of John M. Rutledge and Ann Rutledge, David H. Rutledge attended Illinois College and became the first lawyer in New Salem, Illinois. During the Black Hawk War, Rutledge served alongside his older brother in Abraham Lincoln's company of the Fourth Regiment of Illinois Mounted Volunteers. After his father James Rutledge died in December 1835, he moved with his mother and younger brothers and sisters to Fulton County, Illinois. He worked in the law office of Lewis W. Ross in Lewistown, Illinois. He opposed Lincoln in court several times. In 1840, he married Elizabeth Simms, and they had one child, who died in infancy.

Benjamin P. Thomas, Lincoln's New Salem (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1934), 29, 54, 94; Robert L. D. Miller, Past and Present of Menard County, Illinois (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1905), 94; Isaac H. Elliott, Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 100; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Fulton County, 24 December 1840, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Charlotte Bergevin, Daisy Sundberg, and Evelyn Berg, Camerons, Westward They Came (n.p., 1983), 182-83; Gravestone, Old Concord Cemetery, Petersburg, IL; Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org.