From The Irvines and Their Kin, by Lucinda Boyd; Chicago: R.R. Donnelly, 1908, pp. 309-310:
- "I have in my possession a manuscript from Silas McDowell of Macon County, North Carolina, who endeavored to correct all errors, and give the people historical facts. He was born in 1795, four years before the death of Joseph of Pleasant Gardens, and was a man of remarkable memory, and gathered facts. He says of Joseph McDowell:– 'If there was any man in this part of the State that distinguished himself in mind, as ranking far above his fellows, except Joseph McDowell of Pleasant Gardens, Burke county, tradition has not transmitted the fact; though there were scores of strong-minded, honorable, and patriotic men in this division of the State, who figured in the Revolutionary war. McDowell’s light went out when he was in his noon-day prime, and in the last decade of the 18th century, 1799, and from that time till 1820 there has arisen no bright and particular star.' Joseph McDowell of Pleasant Gardens was born February 25, 1758, and died, as I said, in 1799, at the age of forty-one."
