Will County IL Archives Biographies.....O'Connell, Hon John 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com October 3, 2007, 3:09 am

Author: Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County

HON. JOHN O'CONNELL, of Joliet, member of the Illinois state legislature in 
1881-82, is owner of a coal and wood yard, with office at No. 418 Washington 
street, and has served as president of the Joliet Coal Exchange. A leading 
Democrat, he has been a member of the city central committee and is now 
connected with the county committee. For three years he was a member of the 
Joliet board of education. Fraternally he is past master workman of Stone City 
Lodge No. 26, A. O. U. W.; ex-president and ex-financial secretary of Division 
No. 2, A. O. H., and for several years served as state secretary of the order 
in Illinois. Under Mayor Haley he was appointed city weigher, which office he 
still holds, having been re-appointed by Mayor Mount.

A descendant of Daniel O'Connell, the great statesman, our subject represents 
the seventh generation that was born in the same vicinity, in County Cork, 
Ireland. His father, Michael, a son of William O'Connell, a magistrate, was a 
farmer in that county and for a long time served as supervisor of his town. He 
died when eighty-seven years of age. He married Ellen McCarthy, daughter of 
Charles McCarthy, who was owner of a farm and a country inn in County Cork, 
and whose son is now landlord of the old hotel. Mrs. O'Connell died in Ireland 
when her children were small. Of the family, comprising three sons and one 
daughter, the sons still survive, one, William, being a resident of the old 
home place. John, who was born January 24, 1836, was reared on the homestead 
and attended schools conducted under the old system, where the itinerant 
schoolmaster boarded around among the people of the neighborhood. Later he 
attended St. Coleman's College, where he studied under the celebrated Dr. 
Croke, now bishop of Limerick. Soon after his graduation, in 1859, he came to 
America, taking passage at Queenstown on the sailer "City of Washington," 
Captain Hall, and landing in New York after a voyage of three weeks. On the 
very next trip the steamer was wrecked and lost.

After a short stay in New York Mr. O'Connell drifted to Pennsylvania, Ohio and 
the south. During the war he took out his first papers of naturalization and 
afterward entered the Union army at Staten Island, but the war ended before he 
had been sent to the front. The year 1866 found him in Chicago, employed in a 
north side rolling mill. In 1868 he went to St. Louis and in 1871 came to 
Joliet, where he became one of the first employes of the Illinois Steel 
Company in the old rail mill, continuing there until the mill was shut down in 
1873. As times were then very hard and the country suffering from a financial 
depression, he found it almost impossible to get work, although for nine 
months, in different states, he endeavored to secure employment. Finally he 
was taken into the employ of the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company, where he 
remained until the mills resumed work. In 1881 he was elected to the thirty-
third general assembly on the Democratic, labor and greenback tickets, 
receiving the largest vote of any candidate ever recorded in Will County. In 
the lower house he served on five committees, and as a member of the 
charitable and penal institutions committee assisted in securing an 
appropriation of about $170,000 for the state penitentiary. He was also 
helpful in securing mining legislation. At the expiration of his term he was 
not a candidate for re-election, but bought out a coal business, to which he 
has since given his attention. He and his wife, who was Mary Jennings, a 
native of England, are members of St. Mary's Catholic Church and regular 
attendants at its services and contributors to its support.

Additional Comments:
Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County Illinois Containing 
Biographies of Well Known Citizens of the Past and Present, Biographical 
Publishing Company, Chicago, 1900


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