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one Missouri Settlers James Shaughnessy was an orphan when he immigrated to the United States. A boy setting foot on American soil for the first time, he had grown up in one of very many Irish rural communities devastated by a great famine during the 1840s. James, the future father of adman and journalist James O’Shaughnessy and artist Thomas O’Shaughnessy, fled hunger and the disease that took his parents. Of all the Irish entering the United States between 1820 and 1900, “nearly one third thronged into the country in the eight short years from 1847 to 1854—a grim tribute to the rigours of the famine.”1 Between 1845 and 1854 almost one and a half million Irish immigrants arrived in the United States, and James was among them.2 JamesShaughnessyfoundshelterfirstinNewEngland.Hisdescendants believethatheworkedforafarmernearMilford,Massachusetts,andinlocal shoefactories.ManyIrishwereemployedaroundMilford,wheretherewas a burgeoning boot- and shoe-manufacturing industry. One of these was a certainThomasShaughnessy,a“bootbottomer,”whoappearstohavebeen the brother of James.3 Neither James nor his brothers who followed him to America then used the Gaelic prefix “O” before their family name. Their children would later adopt it, proud of an ancient Gaelic heritage. Settlers It was common for Irish immigrants to stay along the eastern seaboard of theUnitedStates.ButJames,Thomas,andtheirbrotherJohn,whohadbeen bornin1827,provedtobeadventurous.Theywentwestandmadeanewlife forthemselvesassettlersinMissouri,astatethatcoversabouttwicethearea of Ireland. Just how remote it was then is evident from the memoir of John JosephHogan,anIrishpriestwithwhomthefamilybecamewellacquainted andwhoappearstohavebeenthefirstCatholicpastortosettlelong-termin 2 An Irish-American Odyssey northern Missouri. Hogan, when later a bishop, recalled having consulted shipping agents in Ireland in 1848, who advised him that “as the American railways had been built only as far west as the western boundaries of New York and Pennsylvania, the journey westward to St. Louis [in Missouri], about 1,000 miles, was too great to be attempted by uncertain ways, such as stagecoaches and sailing on lakes and rivers.”4 The Mississippi River, however,wasnavigablebysteamboat,andinDecember1848,Hoganspent eight days aboard such a vessel traveling from New Orleans to St. Louis. Many Irish immigrants who went west actually fared better than the majority of those who stayed on the East Coast. By 1870 a large influx of Irish and Germans had helped to make Missouri the sixth most populated state in the Union. Its principal city of St. Louis, situated on the western bank of the Mississippi, became cosmopolitan. Travelers entered St. Louis bydisembarkingatthecity’sbusylandingpoint,ofwhichaninvitingsketch was published back east in 1857.5 James Shaughnessy went west and settled in northern Missouri at this time. He subsequently opened a shoe store in Keytesville, the Chariton Countyseat.Itwashere,about1861,thathewasnaturalizedasaUScitizen. Shortly afterward his brothers John and Thomas joined him and began Shaughnessy and other lands around Newhall, Salt Creek, Chariton County, MO. Plat Book of Chariton County, Missouri (1897), p. 28 (T.55N, Salt Creek R. 19W). Missouri Settlers 3 Thomas Shaughnessy, immigrant from Newhall, Co. Galway. Courtesy Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Illinois. farming tracts of land in that county, at Salt Creek Township, not far from Keytesville. Deer were then abundant in the district.6 The family named its principal new homestead “Newhall,” thus recalling a townland in the small Irish district of Kiltartan in County Galway, from which these brothers had emigrated. Their names appear on Missouri maps from 1876 onward, designating ownership of parcels of land near Newhall.7 Emigrantaid societiesfrequentlyadvisedtheIrishtoleaveovercrowded easternseaportsforplaceswherelaborwasmoreindemand.However,censusdataclearlydemonstratethatinpurchasingfarmlandtheShaughnessys were an exception to the urban rule: “In 1870, for instance, only 14.6 per cent of Irish immigrants were engaged in agricultural pursuits, compared with 54.1 per cent of native-born Americans and nearly 23 per cent of all foreign-born persons.”8 4 An Irish-American Odyssey Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century usually came from farming backgrounds, but most settled in towns in America. Few had money with whichtobuyland.Somealsodislikedthedistancesbetweenfarmhousesin theUnitedStates,whichweregreaterthanthosebetweenhomesinIreland, findingthatsuchdistancesexacerbatedanylonelinessorsenseofisolation. Yetthefactthateventhepoorestimmigrantswerelivinginasocietythat was expanding and becoming wealthier gave them hope. Opportunities continued to beckon. In 1985, in his magisterial work Emigrants and Exiles that includes vivid descriptions of the experience of Irish people crossing the Atlantic to America, Kerby A. Miller, a professor of history at the University of Missouri, pointed out that “between 1840 and 1900—while Ireland’s population shrank from 8.2 million to only 4.5 million—that of the United States soared [from 17.1m] to 76 million.”9 The Mulhollands Another family of Irish origins, that of James and Ann Mulholland, facilitated the settlement of James Shaughnessy and his brothers in Missouri. This was not least because James married their daughter Catherine...

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