Todd, David (Judge)

Born: 1786-03-29 Lexington, Kentucky

Died: 1859-06-09 Columbia, Missouri

Flourished: 1849-02-20 Saint Louis, Missouri

David Todd was the uncle of Mary Lincoln and brother of Robert S. Todd, Mary's father. He attended Transylvania University, served in the military during the War of 1812, read law with George M. Bibb, earned admission to the Kentucky bar, practiced law, and served in the Kentucky Legislature. In 1817, Todd and his wife Eliza, whom he married in 1810 and with whom he would have ten children, moved to the frontier town of Franklin in the Missouri Territory. In 1819, President James Monroe appointed him territorial circuit judge of northern Missouri. When Boone County, Missouri Territory separated from Howard County, Todd was among the citizens that purchased land on which Columbia was laid out in 1818-19. When Missouri became a state in 1821, Governor Alexander McNair appointed Todd state circuit judge, a position he held until 1837. Todd was an ardent Whig, serving as a delegate to the Whig National Convention that nominated William Henry Harrison, Todd's commanding officer during the War of 1812, for president in 1840. In 1850, he was practicing law in Boone County and owned real estate valued at $3,500.

Gravestone, Columbia Cemetery, Columbia, MO; Waldo W. Braden, "Mary Todd Lincoln's Missouri Relatives," Lincoln Herald 93 (Summer 1991), 46; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Boone County, MO, 383.