Historic Families of Kentucky by Thomas Marshall Green, Cincinnati, 
1889, reprinted Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. 1959. pp. 77-78. 
[Mercer county].

DR. WM. A. McDOWELL. The fourth son of Samuel McDowell, of Mercer, and 
Anne Irvine, by name William Adair, was born at the family residence in 
Mercer, March 21, 1795.  He was educated in the schools in the 
neighborhood of Danville, the best in the state, and at Washington 
College, Lexington, Va.  In a letter of his father, already quoted, 
under date of September 22, 1813, mention is made of seven of the name 
being in the army, among them his elder brothers, John Adair and Abram 
Irvine.  In another letter, also addressed to General Andrew Reid, at 
Lexington, Virginia, dated April 14, 1814, his father said:  "My son, 
William, will hand you this.  I have sent him to Washington Academy to 
stay one year . . . He has been living with Dr. Ephraim McDowell for 
twelve months past, studying medicine.  I wish him to study science, and 
intended sending him to the University at Lexington, Kentucky; but the 
fever has been so fatal there, and still is, and parties are so violent, 
that I have sent him to your country." . . .  In another letter to 
General Andrew Reid, dated September 16, 1814, his father wrote:  "This 
evening I received a letter from William, informing me that he was 
drafted, and was just about starting to Richmond . . . I hope you will 
write me soon, and let me know how William went. . . . He is young and 
inexperienced, and I feel uneasy about him." . . . So he also had a part 
in the War of 1812, and it is known that he did some actual fighting; 
and if he ran with the others, at Bladensburg, there is precious little 
ground to blame him for that.  He was in General Winder's command.  At 
the conclusion of the war, he returned to Washington Academy, then 
renewed his medical studies with Dr. Ephraim McDowell, at Danville, and 
received his diploma from the Medical College at Philadelphia.  
Returning to Danville, he entered upon the practice of medicine with Dr. 
Ephraim McDowell, whom he assisted in some of the difficult operations 
which rendered the latter famous throughout the world.  From 1819 to 
1838 he resided, and most successfully practiced, in Fincastle, 
Virginia; then, removing to Louisville, he continued there, with a brief 
interval passed in Evansville, Indiana, until his death.  In 1843, he 
published an interesting volume of original and striking observations 
upon the subject of pulmonary consumption.  In Fincastle, August 24, 
1819, Dr. McDowell married his kinswoman by the half blood, Maria 
Hawkins Harvey. She was the daughter of Matthew Harvey, a Revolutionary 
soldier, whose wife was Magdalen Hawkins, daughter of Benjamin Hawkins, 
a gay, handsome and graceful cavalier, who had run away with and married 
Martha Burden, daughter of Benjamin Burden, Jr., and Magdalena Wood, the 
widow of Captain John McDowell, killed by the Indians in 1742.  Thus the 
blood of Benjamin Burden, the grantee, and of John McDowell, without 
whose aid he could not have fulfilled the conditions of the grant, met 
in the union of Dr. McDowell and his lovely kinswoman - still beautiful 
when the writer saw her, thirty years ago.  Ben. Hawkins and Martha 
Burden have five other children besides the wife of Matthew Harvey, one 
of whom was a daughter, Sarah Hawkins, who married Thomas Mitchell, the 
son of James Mitchell and Captain John McDowell's sister, Margaret.  The 
son of this Thomas Mitchell and Sarah Hawkins was the old cashier at 
Danville of the same name.  And thus, again, the blood of McDowell, 
Mitchell, Burden and Hawkins mingled.

McDowell Irvine Adair Reid Winder Harvey Hawkins Burden Wood Mitchell
=
Danville-Boyle-KY VA Lexington-Fayette-KY PA IN

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/mercer/mcdowell.wa.txt