Thomas David Smith McDowell, Bladen County, N.C., was a planter, legislator, and Confederate congressman, and his father, physician Alexander McDowell, was an Irish immigrant, who was clerk of Bladen County, N.C., 1812-1844. Besides managing Purdie Plantation with his brother John A. McDowell, Thomas served in the state House of Commons, 1846-1850; in the state Senate, 1852-1855 and 1858-1860; and in the Confederate Congress, 1861-1863. He married Mary Elizabeth Davis of Richmond County, with whom he had two sons, Alexander, who moved to Georgia, and John A., Jr., who took over management of the family lands. The collection includes correspondence, financial and legal Papers, and other items, chiefly of Thomas McDowell and his father Alexander. Business and political papers document Bladen County court business, particularly from 1735 to 1844, and include tax lists, slave lists, petitions for road work and mill construction, lists and expenses of jurors, and correspondence about court matters. There is also some information about Alexander McDowell's medical practice, including holograph cures. Papers after 1845 document Thomas McDowell's political career and business interests in the Cape Fear region, especially Elizabethtown, Fayetteville, and Wilmington. They relate to management of Purdie Plantation, which produced naval stores, and activities of the Democratic party in the Cape Fear region. A small group of family materials includes Civil War letters from McDowell's brother John, who was on active duty in Virginia, and from the homefront in Columbus, Miss., to McDowell family relative Lucy Ann Brown, who moved from Columbus to the Owen Hill Plantation in Bladen County during the war. Also included is correspondence in the 1850s that documents the McDowell family's close ties to the Carr family in Ireland.
