Colonel Joseph N. McDowell, M.D., Surgeon, C.S.A. (1805-1868) Born in Fayette County, Kentucky, on April 1, 1805, Joseph Nash McDowell first practiced medicine at Cincinnati, Ohio.  He came to St. Louis in 1840 and soon afterward founded the medical department of Kemper College.  In 1847 he erected the McDowell Medical College building at the corner of Eighth and Gratiot Streets.  That year, it became the medical department of Missouri State University (now the University of Missouri) and continued in that capacity until 1857.  At the beginning of the war, McDowell made no secret of his southern sympathies, and his building was soon confiscated and used first as a barracks and then as the infamous Gratiot Street Prison.  During the war, Dr. McDowell served as medical director for General Sterling Price’s command in the Department of the Trans-Mississippi.  In 1865 he returned to St. Louis to reestablish the college, but he died three years later on September 18, 1868.    (Block 161, Lot 1604)