Series 19 - Davison McDowell letters

14pp

Kerby A. Miller created his abstracts and transcripts of the McDowell letters from the original manuscripts held in the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.

The McDowell family letters are a set of five letters written by and/or to Davison McDowell, a Scots-Irish emigrant from Newry, between 1810 and 1825.
Per Kerby A. Miller: ‘The McDowells were a Scotch-Irish family, from Newry. The first member of the family to emigrate to America was James McDowell, who left his wife and children to visit America with his wife's grandmother who had inherited property in Williamsburg, South Carolina. James landed in Charleston in 1786; his wife followed him, landing in Charleston on October 10, 1787, but she then learned that her husband had died the previous September. Later she married another Irish immigrant, Robert Kirkpatrick, who died in 1798. The family lived on lands above Charleston, probably those inherited by James' grandmother. The following letters were written by [and to] Davison McDowell, the son of James, who had initially remained behind in Newry, but who came to America sometime before 1811. He lived on property adjoining that of his mother's husband's family, the Kirkpatricks. He was "a gentleman of wide and varied tastes, of wealth and property, and of recognized ability - for instance, he served as a delegate to the Union Convention in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1832. He was an Episcopalian and was a vestryman and warden in his church." (Mary James Richards, Our McDowell Ancestry (1958, p. 2). He was born in 1783 and died in 1842 at All Saints Church, Waccamaw, Georgetown County, [South Carolina], om the mainland a few miles back from the causeway leading to Pawley's Island.’
The series consists of a letter from Michael Montgomery, collaborator of Kerby A. Miller, forwarding a passage from the 1996 South Caroliniana Library discussing the McDowell papers, and of Miller’s abstracts of the letters.