Francis O'Neil, Ireland, Scotland, Wisconsin, Iowa
Francis O'Neil was born in 1812 in County Armagh in Ireland (now Northern Ireland). He is reported to be the son of James O'Neil (b.1785, d.1817) and Nancy (Agnes) Hughes (b.1787). James was born in County Antrim and is reported to have had a least two brothers, John and Barney. Not much else has been found about this or prior generations of the O'Neil family. When Francis was about five years old, his father died, and his mother took the children and moved to Scotland.
Francis is known to have had two siblings, a brother John, who reportedly married, had five children, and remained in Scotland; and a sister Hannah (b.1811, d.1903), who married John Devlin (b.1810, d. 1896) in 1835 in either Ireland or Scotland. John was noted to be a tailor. They came to America in 1847, and for a while, they lived in Columbia County, Wisconsin, near Francis. It has been reported that they moved to Milwaukee but the 1880 Census records show them in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where John is noted as operating a dry-goods store. In that Census, it shows that one of their children was born in New York and two in Wisconsin. Hannah and John had at least eight children and they are buried in Lawrence in a large family plot with a number of children and grandchildren.
In Scotland, Francis would grow up in Glasgow and as a young man, was noted to have worked for a while as a potter. At some point, he may have gone back to Ireland. In 1830, he married Rosa Hoy (b.1812, d.1854). After their marriage, they may have lived in both England and Scotland in the 1840's and some of their children were born in Scotland.
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| Francis O'Neil and Elizabeth Nevin |
