Thomas Franklin McDow, York County, South Carolina

THOMAS FRANKLIN McDOW
By: Louise Pettus

When Thomas Franklin McDow (1863-1935), senior member of the Yorkville law firm of McDow and Hildebrand, died, the Yorkville Enquirer treated the death as a front page headline story.

The newspaper sketched his life from birth at Liberty Hill in Kershaw county, son of Dr. Thomas Franklin McDow and Isabella Louisa Cunningham McDow, to his sudden death from pneumonia.

McDow was educated at Carolina Academy in Mecklenburg, Bingham School in Mebane, NC and South Carolina College (now USC). He was admitted to the bar in 1885 and first practiced in Lancaster, moved to Rock Hill after a short time and then a little later joined the law firm of Wilson & Wllson in Yorkville.

“During his 45 years in Yorkville McDow was engaged in most of the important cases, both on the criminal and civil sides of the court, heard in the courthouse of York county, and was often engaged in counsel in important cases in the state courts and other counties. . . (and) in federal courts.” The Enquirer recounted his political offices: twice elected to the SC general assembly, mayor of Yorkville, a longtime school trustee, special circuit judge, chief justice ad litem of the supreme court, chairman of the York county jail commission, president of the state bar association and holding every office in the Presbyterian church that a layman could hold.

While the Enquirer had much to say about McDow’s office holding and various achievements, it was left to a friend, G. Walter Barr, to write a personal tribute that was titled, “Thomas Franklin McDow—the Portrait He Painted for Himself by his Actions.”

Barr said that McDow was best in pleading a case to a jury describing his actions this way, “. . . he was a master mariner on the stormy seas of a big trial, navigating very close to the shoals of reversible acts and words sometimes, without actually colliding with the rules. When the time came to explain to the jury how and why the evidence of his side clearly proved his client to deserve the verdict, Mr. McDow did just that with a force and persuasiveness and appeal to common sense and real oratory that often was what gained the verdict against all the evidence of the other side.”

Barr said that McDow could shout loud enough to be heard from Yorkville to Tirzah but he was just as likely to lean over the iron rail in front of the jury and whisper to them and “since the lawyers on the other side, and the court, could not hear a word of it, there was no objections nor exceptions filed.”

Barr stressed that McDow’s success was largely due to his willingness to fight hard for his client and not just in the courtroom. McDow would tell the world so, “in casual conversations, arguments to friends, to all and sundry. If his personal honor was attacked he would not hesitate to actively fight “with words that were bullets, with fisticuffs, in any way to express his resentment. He had several personal combats in his long life, and never felt like apologizing for any of them.”

In spite of high temper and combativeness, Barr maintained that McDow was always a professional ethical lawyer. He illustrated this with the statement that he knew McDow to decline to take on certain cases such as one he refused to take because he believed that he would be paid in stolen money.

Barr further said that McDow probably did more work, and expended more energy in trying to “help up some fellow man who was down and unable to pay an adequate attorney’s fee, than he did in preparing the lawsuits he was engaged in.”

Just one day after the death of McDow, his brother John C. McDow of Lancaster died. Thomas F. McDow had gone to Lancaster, in bad weather, to see his brother who was in very poor health. It was believed that the trip to Lancaster contributed to his own death.