The common derivation of "Dowell" is from Dougall, and was intended in the Highlands to apply exclusively to the Lowlander; though quite as applicable to the "man from below." (Vide Lower: Dhu, black; gall, a stranger.)
Downing. Old English name familiar in Kentucky. A loc. n. Worc. (Eng.)
Drake. There is no reason to doubt that the Drakes of Devon were all originally of the same race. They bore a dragon (Draco), showing that their name had been Draco. The father of Daniel Drake came to Kentucky in the closing years of the Eighteenth Century, settling in the rich bluegrass county of Mason. Along with a rifle and an axe, he brought five books to the wilds of Kentucky, to wit, a Bible, a hymn book, an arithmetic, a spelling book, and the "Famous History of Montellion, a Romance of the Ages of Chivalry." "The Letters of Lord Chesterfield,"—borrowed by the father of Daniel from a friend in the neighboring Virginian colony—"fell in mighty close"—says the son—"with the tastes of the whole family." Chesterfield and Montellion:—ideal educators even in this "school of the woods," as it was happily termed by its most distinguished graduate, Doctor Daniel Drake.
Daniel Drake was not only a skillful physician and accomplished scholar, but he was the founder of a famous medical school, and an author whose productions, in the estimation of competent critics, have given him and his country a splendid and enduring renown. His elaborate and systematic treatise upon the Diseases of the Valley of the Mississippi is a work which lays broad the foundations of medico-geographical research in the Western Hemisphere, and foreshadows in masterly fashion the rigorous methods of physical science that are now universally in vogue. The author was an explorer by right of birth. He was a true son of his pioneer father, and a typical scion of an adventurous race. The daring navigator, Sir Francis Drake, the son of a Devonshire yeoman, was a true kinsman in spirit, and probably in blood. The same passion for exploration which drove the one to circle the universal seas in an English keel inspired the other to toil through the vast spaces of a continental wilderness and explore the haunts of pestilence upon the shores of the Mexican Gulf. It is doubtless as the author of that unique work—"The Diseases of the Great Interior Valley"—that Daniel Drake will chiefly be remembered, and certainly no one could desire a better title to remembrance. The motto of his famous "Journal," E Sylvis Nuncius, is a succinct and happy characterization of the man. He was indeed an ambassador from nature, and his credentials have passed unchallenged to this day.
Drewry.
Duckworth.
HONORABLE JOHN J. CRITTENDEN.
Dudley.