Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/135

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Mcdowell
McDowell

mained until 30 June, 187G, after which he re- turned to San Francisco in charge of the Division of the Pacilic until his retirement on 15 Oct., 1882. Gen. McDowell had great fondness for landscape gardening, and during the last years of his life was one of the park commissioners of San Francisco, in which capacity he constructed a park out of the neglected Presidio reservation and laid out drives that command fine views of the Golden Gate.


McDowell. James, statesman, b. in Rock- bridge county, Va., 12 Oct., 1796 ; d. near Lexing- ton, Va., 24 Aug., 1851. His father, .James, was descended from Ephraim McDowell, an early set- tler in Rockbridge county. His mother, Sarah Preston, was the sister of Gen. Francis Preston, whose daughter the younger James McDowell subsequently married. He was graduated at Princeton in 1817, and engaged in planting till 1831, when he was in the Virginia legislature and took high rank as an orator. During this session he advocated the gradual manumission of slaves, and also supported in a series of brilliant speeches measures for internal improvement and the public- school system by extra legislative appropriation. He was governor in 1842-4, received the degree of LL. D. from Princeton in 1846, and in the latter year was elected to congress as a Democrat, serving till 1851. Although an advocate of state rights, he vehemently opposed slavery, and is said to have •done more to impress upon the south the superior economy as well as philanthropy of abolition than any other from Jefferson till his own day. When the extremists demanded that California should not be admitted as a free state without an equivalent in the extension of slave territory, he addressed the house in a speech on that subject, on 3 Sept., 1850, that was unanimously described by those present, of whatever party, as one of the most eloquent efforts that had been heard in con- gress. A contemporary writer says : " His tall form, graceful gestures, and commanding voice revived the expectations formed of his fame. His sustained and splendid appeal confirmed them. The house repeatedly broke into involuntary ap- plause. At the conclusion of his hour it shouted ' Go on ! ' a proceeding hitherto unknown in the his- tory of congress. At the conclusion all business was suspended, and the house adjourned almost in -silence." See " History of the Anti-Slavery Meas- ures of the 37th and 38th Congresses," bv Henry Wilson (N"ew York, 1864).


McDowell, John, clergyman, b. in Bedmin- ster. N. J., 10 Sept., 1780; d. 'in Philadelphia, Pa., in February, 1863. He was graduated at Princeton in 1801, and ordained in 1804 pastor of the Pres- byterian church in Elizabethtown, N. J., where he remained till 1833. He then was in charge of the Central church of Philadelphia till 1846, and in May of that year established the Spring Garden church, of which he was pastor till his death. He was a trustee of Princeton for more than fifty years, and of the theological seminary there from its foundation, and as agent of both institu- tions he collected sums for their endowment. Union and the University of South Carolina gave him the degree of D. D. in 1818. The first Sunday- school in Elizabethtown was established during his pastorate there in 1814, and he wrote for its use the first Bible-class questions that were ever pub- lished (Elizabethtown, 1814). His other works are " A Bible-Class Manual " (1819) and " A Svstem of Theology" (1826). See '-Memoir," by William B. Sprague (New York, 1864).


McDowell, Katherine Sherwood, author, b. in Holly Springs, Miss., 26 Feb., 1849 ; d. there,

July, 1884. She was educated in seminaries in 

Mississippi and Alabama, as her family moved from place to place in advance of the National forces. She married Edward McDowell at Holly Springs in 1870, and in 1872 removed to Boston, where for several years she was private secretary to Henry W. Longfellow, who predicted for her success in literature. Her first contribution to the press that attracted attention was a poem entitled " The Radical Club." The club, which she de- scribed as the " den of the unknowable " and the "cave of the unintelligible," is said to have been killed by the poem. In 1878 she returned to Hol- ly Springs, in the midst of the yellow-fever epi- demic, to nurse her father and brother. Her pub- lications, which appeared under the pen-name of " Sherwood Bonner," include " Like unto Like " (Boston, 1881) and " Dialect Tales " (1884).


McDowell, Samuel, jurist, b. in Pennsylvania, 27 Oct., 1735 ; d. near Danville, Ky., 25 Oct., 1817. He took an active part in the movement that brought about the war of independence, which is proved by letters addressed to him by Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, George Washington, and others. He served in Capt. Lewis's company at Braddock's defeat, and with his eldest son, who like himself was an offi- cer in the Continental line, witnessed Cornwallis's surrender. For many years he was a member of the Virginia legislature, which in 1782 appointed him a commissioner to settle the land-claims of Kentucky. He settled in Danville in 1783, served in the Kentucky legislature for several years, and was a circuit judge, organizing the first court in Danville, which was held in a log cabin near Dan- ville, and was the first court formed in the terri- tory. He was also president of the first State con- stitutional convention of Kentucky, held in Dan- ville, 19 April, 1792. He remained upon the bench until within a few years of his death. — His son, Ephraim, surgeon, b. in Rockbridge county, Va., 11 Nov., 1771 ; d. in Danville, Ky., 20 June, 1830, attended classical schools in Georgetown and Bards- town, Ky., and studied medicine in Staunton, Va., completing his medical education in Edinburgh in 1793-'4. He began to practise in Ddnville. Ky., in 1785. and for years was the foremost practitioner in the southwest. In 1817 he was made a mem- ber of the Medical society of Philadel- phia. He received the degree of M. D. from the University of Maryland in 1825. In 1809 he success- fully performed the operation for extir- pation of the ovary, the first on record, and acquired in con-

sequence European

celebrity. A description of this, with other cases, he published in the Philadelphia " Eclectic Repertory and Analytic Review" in 1817. He also acquired fame as a lithotomist. Dr. McDowell's account of his opei'ations on the ovaries were received with incredulity in many places, especially abroad, but at this time his title to the name of the " father of ovariotomy " is generally recognized. He was a man of culture and liberal