Anthony Daniel O'Connell O'Neill and Elizabeth Helen Williamson Carson

This entry is prompted by something of a double family anniversary...the death of Anthony D. O. O'Neill on April 5, 1902 and the birthday of his wife, Elizabeth H. W. Carson on April 8, 1838. In 2012, an entry  on Elizabeth and the Carson family was entered and can be found here.

Anthony Daniel O'Connell O'Neill in his later years

O’Neill Name History

The O’Neill or Uí Néill (descendants of Niall) are Irish and Scottish dynasties who claim descent from Niall Noigiallach (Niall of the Nine Hostages), a historical King of Tara who died about 405. The first generation of the Uí Néill were his sons, seven in all:

• Conall Gulban, ancestor of the Cenél Conaill dynasty.
• Éndae, ancestor of the Cenél nÉndai
• Eógan, ancestor of the Cenél nEógain dynasty.
• Coirpre, ancestor of the Cenél Coirpri dynasty.
• Lóegaire, ancestor of the Cenél Lóegaire dynasty.
• Conall Cremthainne, ancestor of the Clann Cholmáin and Síl nÁedo Sláine.
• Fiachu, ancestor of the Cenél Fiachach.

 All these men were in their lifetime known as members of The Connachta dynasty, or as "the sons of Niall." The term Uí Néill did not - by its very nature - come into use until the time of Niall's grandsons and great-grandsons. Dynasties descended from the Uí Néill, such as the Cenél Conaill and Cenél nEógain, held power in Ulster until their defeat in the Nine Years War in 1603. The heads of the families left for Catholic Europe in 1607, an event known as the Flight of the Earls. –from Wikipedia

Anthony F. O’Neill

Anthony F. O’Neill was born in Ireland circa 1780. Some accounts speculate that his wife’s maiden name was O’Connell (in that their first son, Anthony Daniel, has O’Connell as a middle name). I would also speculate that her first name was Sarah given that A.D. O’Neill’s 1^st daughter was named Mary Catherine (for his wife’s Mother) and the 2^nd daughter named Sarah Elizabeth. However, while the O’Connell surname is certainly a possibility, an equally likely possibility is that Anthony was named for the famed Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847). Anthony Daniel O’Connell O’Neill was born near Waterford, Ireland. Anthony F. and his wife had three sons and two or more daughters:

• Anthony Daniel born September 4, 1833
• David O’Neill was born circa 1835 to 1838
• John O’Neill born circa 1837

Grave marker of Anthony Francis O'Neill (c. 1780-1867)

Waterford, Ireland

The 18th and 19th centuries saw the expansion of Waterford’s Adephi port as industrialization gathered pace with the processing of agricultural produce from the surrounding areas.  Passengers also left from the docks to work the cod fisheries or immigrate to America.  By about 1800 Waterford was a booming port; in the 19th century Waterford had the biggest shipbuilding yards in Ireland.  Waterford-built ships sailed the seas with five transatlantic passenger liners built at Waterford for the London-Le Havre-New York line.  Another booming industry was that of Denny’s Bacon - two thirds of the exports of Irish bacon and ham in 1860 were exported from Waterford.

Emigrants leaving Ireland

O’Neill Departure from Ireland

In 1842, Anthony F. O’Neill and his three sons left Waterford, Ireland for America. They departed about 5 years before the massive Irish exodus tied to the potato famine. Still, between 1815 and 1845 about 1 million people left Ireland. The existence of large ocean liners had yet to come so presumably their crossing was upon a smaller sailing vessel. Typically these voyages took between 40 and 90 days depending upon the wind. Family stories tell that they hid in a hogshead (a large wooden cask used to hold alcohol) to avoid detection by the English crew. If this is indeed true, it is difficult to imagine how they coped once discovered or how they simply survived the presumably 2 month voyage in conditions where water was closely rationed and buck space was often limited and crowded.

The mother and daughters stayed behind in Ireland. Anthony F. felt that while it was safe to raise girls in Ireland, he did not want his sons to be drafted into the English Army to fight against the Irish. The creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland in 1800 with the “Act of Union” increased levels of Irish conscription into the British Army with some estimates that prior to the potato famine some 50% of the British Army were recruited in Ireland. The Irish constituted as much as two-thirds of the British Army by 1860, and bitter memories of the English repression of the Irish rebellion of 1798 which resulted in some 30,000 victims in 3 1/2 months all suggest that the elder Anthony’s fears were likely not unfounded.

Anthony Daniel, his father and brothers and most of their children harbored deep prejudices against the English even in later years in America. Anthony F. and his sons sent money back to Ireland for their Mother’s support throughout their lives. Anthony Daniel received letters from his Mother even after Anthony F.’s death in 1867 and he continued to provide her with support in her later years. The date of her death is unknown but was sometime after 1867.

O’Neill Arrival in America

Anthony F. O’Neill was a butcher by trade and worked as a butcher in Baltimore, Maryland after arriving in America. Young Anthony Daniel was apprenticed out to another Baltimore butcher, Andrew Turner, for five years and learned the butcher trade as well. Anthony Daniel would have been about ten years old and attended school in Baltimore also. The O’Neill family lived together in a boarding house. By fifteen years old, Anthony Daniel was a journeyman butcher and for the next three years he and his father worked variously in Philadelphia, New York and Charleston, South Carolina. Sometime later, they came to rapidly growing Chattanooga, Tennessee; then a boom town following the arrival of the railroad in 1850. They worked in a slaughterhouse owned by John Devine, where they processed cattle, sheep and hogs.



A circa 1850 Butcher sharpening his knife

O’Neill in Chattanooga, Tennessee

In Chattanooga, Anthony Daniel O’Connell O’Neill met Elizabeth H. W. Carson. They were married June 10, 1852. Anthony was not yet nineteen years old and Elizabeth was only fourteen years old. Elizabeth was born near Ashville, in Haywood County, North Carolina on April 8, 1838, (although her headstone indicates her birthplace as Newport, Tennessee). She was the daughter of Andrew Jackson Carson (born March 16, 1820) and Mary Catherine Polly Williamson (born September 26, 1820). Andrew and Mary Catherine were about eighteen years old when Elizabeth, their first child, was born.

Early Chattanooga, Tennessee

They left North Carolina for Tennessee when Elizabeth was three months old. Mary Catherine rode a mule and carried the baby across the Blue Ridge Mountains. They made their home near Chattanooga where some other Carson family members lived. Although, 1850 census records indicate they were actually outside Murfreesboro, north of Chattanooga, which is where Andrew’s brother, Robert, and sisters, Judith and Adeline, are also found on census records. After Andrew Jackson Carson’s death in 1860 many of the family, including his widow, Mary Catherine Carson, migrated south and settled in Walker County, Georgia; south of Lookout Mountain. We find residence in this area of many other associated families like the Filbys, Fewells, Dockins, Carsons and others.

Charcoal Portrait of Elizabeth Helen Williamson Carson



Birth & Family of Mary Catherine O’Neill

Anthony Daniel O’Connell O’Neill owned six acres of land near Chattanooga. Apparently, Anthony enjoyed drinking and would sometimes stay out nights. Elizabeth one night rigged a bucket of water so that when he came in one late night and opened the door it dumped onto him. It was one of the few times she ever pulled a joke on anyone. Elizabeth rarely joked. Her photographs show a stern and unsmiling woman. Anthony and Elizabeth’s first child, Mary Catherine O’Neill was born in Chattanooga on November 17, 1853.

Lecompton Kansas in 1856

O’Neills Head West and Settle in Kansas

The Kansas Territory opened for settlement after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. In the early spring of 1855 the O’Neill family left Tennessee in an ox cart. They stopped in Illinois that summer and put in a crop. Sarah Elizabeth O’Neill was born in Illinois on August 26, 1855. Sarah was a small woman and she never married. We find her in the 1910 census living with her Uncle James Washington Carson. In 1856, the O’Neills came to Kansas; although the 1859 census lists their arrival as 1855 with 5 in the family. Their first stop was Lecompton, the territorial capital of Kansas. There Anthony operated a butcher shop and located cornerstones for newcomers. Judith C. O’Neill was born here on July 13, 1857. Anthony filed a land claim about six miles from town in the Clinton locality of Douglas County. His father, Anthony F., also came to Kansas in about 1857 and took up a claim nearby. On Anthony Daniel’s claim the family lived in a log house with a fireplace. On cold nights they would drape quilts and blankets in a circle around the fireplace to try to stay warm. One day Anthony was away helping a neighbor, Mr. Bidgood, dig a well. When he returned home that night his clothes were covered with ice. The O’Neills were only a few miles west of Lawrence, Kansas during the Sack of Lawrence in 1856, but had left the area by the time of Quantrill’s Raid in 1863.

Map of Davis (later Geary) County showing Humbodt and McDowell Creeks

First O’Neill Children born in Kansas

In Douglas County, Kansas was born Anthony Andrew O’Neill on September 13, 1859; our ancestor Martha Jane O’Neill on March 22, 1861; and Margaret Adeline O’Neill on January 17, 1863. In 1862, Anthony Daniel O’Neill, Thomas Lee Brown, Alex Davis, and a Mr. Ryecroft made a trip to Davis County (later renamed Geary County) in an oxcart, staked out and filed land claims. In March of 1863 the O’Neill family: Anthony, Elizabeth and six children: Catherine age 9, Sarah age 7, Judith age 5, Andrew age 3, Martha Jane age 2 and Margaret Adeline about 3 months old, left for Davis County with one team of oxen, one team of horses, a cow or two and a few sheep. When they arrived they found their claim had been filed on land claimed by the railroad. This land was near the John Wallace place on Humboldt Creek outside Junction City. In the summer of 1863 Anthony traded a pair of Pennsylvania mares to William E. Poole for 80 acres on upper McDowell Creek, near Manhattan, where the family finally settled. He traded Mr. Poole a cow for a tent in which the family lived that summer. In the 1909 plat map of Jackson Township in Geary County we find the farms of the O’Neill children and other associated families.

Jackson Township, Kansas plat map with notes on O'Neill and other families

Death in the O’Neill Family

In the fall of 1863 Anthony put a roof over a log frame that was already on the claim. Elizabeth caulked the cracks with cow chips and mud. A local boy from the Wallace family died of scarlet fever. Margaret Adeline, the baby, caught the fever as well and died January 23, 1864…she was 1 year and six days old. Owen Roe O’Neill was born March 6, 1864 and died in the fall on October 7, 1864. Both Margaret Adeline and Owen Roe were buried in a home cemetery on the family place in a timbered area north of the creek near the boundary of the property.

The old O'Neill place on McDowell Creek.

O’Neills and Civil War in Kansas

In the fall of 1864, Anthony O’Neill, Charles Briggs, Bruce Monfort and William D. Poole were starting a new saw mill when word came that a squad of Union soldiers from Fort Leavenworth were gathering up all available men. Anthony did not want to leave his family unprotected and wanted to resist conscription but the family convinced him to go as refusal to go along with the soldiers likely meant imprisonment or worse. So Elizabeth and the five children, along with Grandfather Anthony F. O’Neill who had come to live with them, were left on their own that winter. Anthony F. was 84 years old and not much help, he would die three years later in 1867. However, he could still handle the ox team and wagon and go gather firewood to heat the house. One day, Anthony F. was riding an old mare, Sock, when she put her head down to drink at the creek Anthony F. fell off and broke his shoulder blade. He left the family for a few days and returned with his shoulder and arm wrapped and bandaged.

Anthony D. O’Neill Service at Fort Riley

The four men that were taken by the Union Army spent the winter of 1864-1865 at Fort Riley. They were to be trained as Home Guards. Charlie Briggs was a Captain and about all he did was holler and cuss. They actually had a good time, because they all knew Charlie, and they didn’t much care about their duties, and neither did Charlie. When they were dismissed in the spring, this was the discharge orders Old Charlie gave them: “Disperse! Ride like hell for home and stay there! You Goddamn Sons of Bitches…Don’t come back.”

Fort Riley, Kansas 1861

Kansas Frontier Life

Sometimes Anthony O’Neill worked for William Poole for 50 cents a day and bought corn for 50 cents a bushel which he would ground at Mitchell’s Mill on Lower Clark’s Creek. The mill was operated by John Phelps. They would thrash rye, then wash and roast it for coffee. They cooked citron with sorghum on their cornbread too. They raised black-eyed peas for food. Anthony made rollers to take the cotton they raised, so it could be used for mattresses. They spun thread from wool and wove cloth for clothing. They also pulled iron weed to make thread for doll clothes.

The Anthony D. O. O'Neill family circa 1775
Back row: Emma Elizabeth, Sarah Elizabeth, Martha Jane, Anthony Andrew, Judith Caroline
Middle row: Mary Catherine, Anthony Daniel, Elizabeth Helen
Front row: Rose Helen, James Alexander, Thomas Matthew, David Edward, Theresa Matilda

Sources

Much of the basis for this history came from a family history letter I received from a family member in Kansas that chronicled the life of Anthony O'Neill. I added additional information as I found it.