Robert H. McDow Legal and Financial Documents, 1826-1847

This collection contains eight deeds, a lease document, and a circuit court issued bill, dating from 1826 to 1847, mostly related to Robert H. McDow.

The McDow family emigrated from Scotland to America in the late 1700s, first settling in Pennsylvania and later South Carolina. Robert Hartness McDow was born in 1800 in South Carolina. In 1807, his parents moved their family to Illinois. In 1829, McDow married Mary Terry "Pollu" Riggs. McDow served as a Colonel during the Black Hawk War in 1832 and served as the first sheriff of Scott County, Illinois, from 1839-1840. Later in the 1840s, he and his family moved to Iowa, where they lived from 1848 to 1871. In 1862, McDow was arrested on a charge of disloyalty. According to family historian Ida McDow Rodman, McDow was a Copperhead during the Civil War. McDow moved to California in 1871 and died there in 1882.

This collection consists of eight deeds, a lease document, and a circuit court-issued bill. There are six deeds for land in Morgan County, Illinois, and two for land in Boone County, Missouri. This collection also includes a land lease for property on which to build a meeting house with a yard, leased by James B. Riggs to Robert H. McDow. The circuit court-issued bill is addressed to Ira Davenport for the sum of ten dollars and fifty cents.

This collection was donated to the Library by Michelle Davis, a descendant of Robert H. McDow, in 2020.