David Owen Dodd

David O. Dodd

Roderick Lathrop "R. L." Dodge was a prominent Little Rock physician and pharmacist, and temperance advocate.

Dodge was born in Vermont in 1808. He graduated from the Medical Department of Dartmouth College in 1834. After graduation he became a medical missionary to the Cherokee and Creek in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma). He began publishing The Temperance Journal in 1844.

R.L. and his sixteen year old daughter Mary S. Dodge became embroiled in the case of David Owen Dodd, the "Boy Martyr of the Confederacy," in 1863. Dodd was a seventeen year old who was caught with a notebook detailing positions and number of Union troops occupying Little Rock. Dodd, who was purported in the city to make a tobacco deal for his father, had spent time with Mary at the Dodge home in Little Rock before his capture. Cast under a cloud of suspicion by occupying General Frederick Steele R.L. and Mary were summoned to a gunboat on the Arkansas River and escorted to Vermont for the duration of the Civil War. Dodd was hanged on January 8, 1864.

Dodge died on March 21, 1893, and is buried at Mount Holly Cemetery.