SWENEY, Joseph P., b 1846; 1905 Bio, Mesa County, Colorado http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/mesa/bios/sweneyjp.txt --------------------------------------- Donated August 2001 Transcribed by Judy Crook from the book: Progressive Men of Western Colorado Published 1905, A.W. Bowen & Co., Chicago, Ill. --------------------------------------- Joseph P. Sweney Justice of the Peace and Police Magistrate Joseph P. Sweney, of Grand Junction, whose official record is clear and strong, and who has been an effective force for good in the preservation of the peace and order of the community, and has aided materially in sustaining the dignity and power of legal authority among the people, is a native of Milton, Northumberland county, Pennsylvania, where he was born in 1846. His parents were Montgomery W. and Clarinda (Penney) Sweney, also natives of Pennsylvania. The father was a merchant and carried on a successful business in his native state for years and afterward in Illinois and Nebraska at different times. The family moved to Illinois in 1853, and during the Civil war the father was a captain on a Mississippi river steamboat. His last days were passed in Nebraska, where he died in 1875, at the age of seventy. The mother passed away three years earlier, aged sixty-five. They were the parents of five children, of whom their son Joseph was the third in the order of birth. He spent his boyhood and youth in Pennsylvania and Illinois, and after leaving school filled the position of bookkeeper and paymaster in the coal regions of the latter. In 1886 he came to Grand Junction and opened a hardware store, which he conducted until the spring of 1889, having varying success. He was always active in the affairs of the community and displayed executive and administrative ability of such an order that in 1887 he was elected mayor of the town, and in the discharge of his duties in that office he won commendation from all classes of the citizens. In 1893 he was appointed United States commissioner, and was elected a justice of the peace and has been continuously re-elected ever since. He has also been police magistrate for the last eight years. His judicial knowledge and temperament, his love of justice and his clearness of vision in discerning the true inwardness of cases, and moreover, his general devotion to the interests of the community, make him an exceptionally fair and capable official, and all good citizens feel that the welfare of the city is safe in his hands as far as he has control of it, while the turbulent and lawless elements fear and respect him. He is in private life a genial and companionable gentleman, adding to the social features of the town an element of value through the courtesy of his manner, the variety and extent of his information and the felicity of his expression on all topics of current thought. In all the constituents of good citizenship he has a high rank in the public estimation, and as a man he enjoys the respect and good will of all who come in contact with him. =================================================== Contributed for use by the USGenWeb Archive Project (http://www.usgenweb.org) and by the COGenWeb Archive Project USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access.