Madison County AlArchives Biographies.....O'Shaughnessey, Michael J. & James F. 
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/alfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 September 18, 2011, 8:33 pm

Source: See below
Author: Smith & De Land, publishers

  MICHAEL J. and JAMES F. O'SHAUGHNESSEY. In the annals of Ireland the name of
O'Shaughnessey is among the oldest, and is identified with those patriotic
struggles which have commanded the sympathy and respect of all true Americans.
For hundreds of years its representatives have shown qualities of manhood and
sagacity which make a staying race.

  "The great rebellion" of 1641, in Ireland, was brought on by penal laws as to
the Catholic religion, which pressed on a whole people, and by the systematic
iniquity of despoiling them of their possessions. With Poger Moore and other
prominent men, the O'Shanghnesseys suffered, and after the conquest of Ireland,
effected by Oliver Cromwell with his powerful army in 1649, through several
years of butchery and spoliation exceeded only by the Roman Titus in his
destruction of the Jews, the landed estates of the O'Shaughnesseys, in County,
Galway, were confiscated and allotted to men who aided in the reduction of the
country, as were those of many other so-called "insurgents." For nearly two
hundred years, until 1837, the Catholics of Ireland, numbering between 5,O00,000
and 6,000,000 of people, were debarred of the common rights of civil society and
of political privileges. Hut members of the O'Shaughnessey family survived the
bloodshed and the forfeiture of estates, and have held positions among the
respected and prosperous, unbonght and unintimidated.

  In 1836, Thomas O'Shaughnessey came to the United States, and established, in
Cincinnati, a commission house for the sale of dry goods in packages imported
from abroad and dispatched from eastern factories. He succeeded in building up a
large business, and acquired a considerable fortune.

  In 1846, his brother James O'Shaughnessey came to this country, settled at
Newport, Ky., and engaged advantageously in the manufacture of cotton goods.

  MICHAEL J. O'SHAUGNESSEY the elder son of James, was born in 1833 on his
father's estate in Kildare County, Leinster—his mother being an O'Kelly and the
blood on both sides purely Celtic. he was educated at St. Xavier's College,
Cincinnati, and then entered the commission house of his uncle Thomas.

  In 1861, when Salmon P. Chase, who proved to be a great financier, was called
by President Lincoln to assume the arduous responsibilities of Secretary of the
Treasury of the United States on the eve of the sectional war, he found the
department Filled with expert officials opposed to the Administration; and,
looking around for the means of security for himself and for the Government, he
sought from his own State, Ohio, ten competent and thoroughly trustworthy young
men, to be put at once into positions of control.

  Among these Michael J. O'Shaughnessey was selected and placed at the head of
the important department of accounts, under General Spinner, the Treasurer. At
that period the forms of business and of bookkeeping for the Government were
obstructive and dilatory from unnecessary red tape and complicated entries. The
emergencies of the times soon developed need for more direct and prompt methods,
and Major O'Shaughnessey proposed and effected a change in the entire system,
which, while securing the Government, offered facilities for the rapid
transaction of the enormous and vital business of the Treasury Department. Those
improved methods are in use in Washington to-day.

  After the war, having no special interest in politics or in the society of
Washington he joined his brother James, who had opened a commission house at
Nashville, Tennessee.

  Later on, Major O'Shaughnessey purchased the machine shops of the Memphis &
Charleston railroad at Huntsville, and converted them into a cotton-seed oil
factory, which he has conducted with great success. Through his influence his
brother became attracted to Alabama and embarked in plans for the development of
Huntsville on a large scale.

  Major O'Shaughnessey is president of ihe Huntsville Land and Improvement
Company, which has done so much in this direction even in this, the commencement
of its career. Possessing a fine residence in Nashville, he has just completed,
north of Huntsville, a country-seat, "Kildare," superior in style and finish to
any in the State; and he is about to establish in the town a factory for the
production of a first class fertilizer. A man of uncommon business ability, he
is scholarly, refined in manners and of cultivated tastes, an educated
draughtman, a musician and a connoisseur in art. He is a gentleman of sociable
disposition and is fond of field sports, fine horses and fox hunting. His stable
contains select thoroughbred riding horses and his kennel probably the best
fox-honnds in the State. He married Miss Pyles, of Nashville, Tenn., a
grand-niece of John C. Calhoun and of Major Nicholas Hobson of Nashville. They
have a family of four sons and one daughter.

  JAMES F. O'SHAUGHNESSEY, the younger son of James, was born in Dublin in 1841,
and from St. Xavier's College, in 1859, went into a commission house in
Cincinnati. At the close of the sectional war, he was in the Quartermaster
Department under General Swigert at that city, having shown great ability in
handling transportation facilities

  Opening a commission house in Nashville in 1805, Colonel O'Shaughnessey bought
the first cotton of any volume which passed through that place in commercial
circles. In 1868, he and his brother originated one of the first cotton-seed oil
factories in the South. In order to conduct satisfactorily the sale of cotton
seed products, he moved to New York in 1871, and was the first to open the way
for that industry in the east and in the foreign markets of the world. He
shipped the first cargo of cotton-seed oil to the olive growers of the
Mediterranean. Shortly after going to New York he married a daughter of Judge
Nelson J. Waterbury, a gentleman of wealth and influence in the State of
Connecticut. In 1873, Jay Gould's corner in the currency of the country, which
produced Black Friday, and wrought ruin to thousands, caught the
O'Shaughnesseys, and temporarily crippled them: but, having credit, they soon
recovered. Continuing the commission business with which he has been constantly
identified, Col. James F. O'Shaughnessey established at Brooklyn a refinery of
cotton-seed oil. By a judicious purchase made by him some years ago, these
brothers own forty-three acres of land in Harlem, where the gaslights and
sidewalks of New York city have now been placed. In the rapid spread of that
great emporium, it may not take many years for this property to occupy an
important position of untold value. Colonel O'Shaughnessey also purchased from
the Government of Nicaragua the franchise of the Nicaragua Canal, for the sum of
$100,000. The fabulous expense of making the DeLesseps Panama Canal renders it
impracticable and abortive, and the Nicaragua enterprise the only one likely to
be accomplished. Colonel O'Shaughnessey has organized a company with a capital
of $60,000,000, and has obtained the passage of an Act by Congress which gives
the protection of the United States Government to the project. Hence, if
successfully carried through, this magnificent improvement for the commerce of
the world will be identified with the administration of President Cleveland.
Colonel O'Shaughnessey has also made investments in Pensacola, the only
first-class harbor of the United States on the Gulf of Mexico from which ships
of large tonnage can export coal and iron. And he has been a pioneer in
establishing Brunswick, Ga., with its bar thirty feet deep and land-locked
estuary, as the great seaport of the South Atlantic coast. This is likely to
become the principal place of entry for the great trade with South America, and
also the Eastern terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which runs on the
best line of latitude, and is free from obstructions of ice and snow. He has
also projected, and is engaged in arranging, a great trunk line railroad from
Brunswick to St. Louis, through Huntsville, Ala. and a line from the latter
point to Cincinnati. These are grand enterprises, showing sagacity and breadth
of mind, coupled with energy and courage, which, combined, constitute genius.
But, while inaugurating these gigantic improvements and promoting them with his
own money, as well as that of his friends. Col. James F. O'Shaughnessey prefers
that others be chosen to carry out the details, and keeps himself in the
background, free from care and drudgery. Never depressed and of great resources,
he is a man of rare business intuition, buoyant temper and elastic spirit—as
fresh in feeling as a boy, the sort of man to accomplish great results. Among
the exclusive plutocracy of New England, he has an elegant residence at
Buzzard's Bay, on the coast of Massachusetts, and on Monte Sano, Alabama, a
pretty villa, for the accommodation of himself and his guests during his trips
to Huntsville.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Northern Alabama: Historical and Biographical
Birmingham, Ala.: Smith and De Land
1888

PART IV.
MONOGRAPHS OF THE PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS IN NORTHERN AND CENTRAL ALABAMA,
TOGETHER WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF MANY OF THEIR REPRESENTATIVE PEOPLE.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/madison/bios/oshaughn95nbs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/alfiles/

File size: 9.8 Kb