From History of Walworth County Wisconsin by Albert Clayton Beckwith, Vol. II, 
Publ. 1912 - Page 992-996
 
JAMES HENNESSEY.  There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the 
spectacle of a life that has reached its autumn with a harvest of good and 
useful deeds.  It is like the forest in October days when the leaves have 
borrowed the richest colors of the light and glow in the mellowed sheen of the 
Indian summer, reflecting in their closing days all the radiance of their 
earthly existence.  The man who has lived a clean, useful and self-denying 
life and has brought into potential exercise the best energies of his mind 
that he might make the world brighter and better for his being a  part of it, 
while laboring for his individual advancement, cannot fail to enjoy a serenity 
of soul that reveals itself in his manner and conversation.  When such a life 
preserved in its strength and integrity so that even in age its influence 
continues unabated, it challenges the added admiration of those whose good 
fortune it is to be brought into contact with it.  Such a life has been that 
of James HENNESSEY, for over fifty years one of the substantial and 
representative agriculturists of Walworth county, whose interests he has ever 
had at heart and sought to promote since the early pioneer days, and he has 
played no inconspicuous part in the affairs of the community so long honored 
by his citizenship, and now, in the eighty-seventh year of a life that has 
been noted for its sterling honesty, industry and devotion to family, church 
and his adopted country, he can look backward with no compunction of 
conscience for misdeeds and forward to the Mystic Beyond with no fear.  Such a 
life merits a record of its deeds, that the debt due it may be acknowledged 
and that it may serve as stimulus to others to endeavor to emulate it.  Bu 
this record is too familiar to the people of the locality of which this 
history deals to require any fulsome encomium here, his life-work speaking for 
itself in stronger terms that the biographer could employ in polished 
periods.  There is no doubt but that his long life has been due to his 
conservative habits, wholesome living and pure thinking.  He is hospitable and 
charitable, his many acts of kindness springing from his largeness of heart 
rather than from any desire to gain the plaudits of his fellow men.
 
Like many of the energetic and esteemed citizens of this action of the great 
Badger commonwealth, James HENNESSEY is a native of the picturesque Emerald 
Isle, the light of day having first smitten his eyes at the historic village 
of Ballatona, county Limerick, Ireland, on June 21, 1826.  He was the sixth of 
a family of six sons and three daughters born to Patrick and Catherine 
(BOLAND) HENNESSEY, each representing sturdy old families of that country.
 
James HENNESSEY grew to manhood in his native land and there received such 
educational advantages as the opportunities of that time afforded in the 
common schools.  When a boy he went to Mitchellstown and became an apprentice 
to a baker; becoming skilled in this line of endeavor he followed the same 
until he emigrated to America, in 1849, when twenty-three years old, having 
made a tedious voyage in a sailing vessel from Liverpool to Boston.  He began 
his career in the New World on a New England farm in Vermont, and worked as a 
farm hand until his marriage, on May 19, 1854, at Burlington, Vermont, to Mary 
SHANNAHAN, a native of his own country, who had been in the United States 
about four years.  As bride and groom, in the following autumn, they came 
west and lived about a year at Rockford, Illinois.  In the summer of 1855 they 
joined the tide of emigration to the new Minnesota century and took a 
government claim at the head of Lake Leison.  About 1859 the Sioux Indians 
manifested the troublesome disposition which soon after resulted in an 
uprising and the massacre and dispersal of thousands of settlers.  James 
HENNESSEY abandoned the country before the climax of these troubles, and 
finally located in Alabama and engaged in work under some railroad 
contractors. The Civil war brought this period of his career to a somewhat 
abrupt end, and on the day Fort Sumter was fired upon he rode on one of the 
last trains to leave Selma, Alabama, for the North, a portion of the railroad 
being destroyed on the night following his departure.  He brought his family 
to Delavan, Walworth county, Wisconsin, and in June 1861, settled in Richmond 
township, where he has spent over half a century of his well ordered and 
useful life.  His first purchase of land was forty acres in section 26, where 
is his present homestead.  During the early years of his residence here he was 
in the midst of the wooded, uncultivated conditions which characterized this 
portion of Wisconsin at that time, and he performed the work of a pioneer in 
developing the locality, enduring the hardships and privations incident to 
such  life, but, being a courageous and ambitions man, he permitted no 
obstacle to thwart him, and persevering, soon became well established.  Adding 
to his original purchase from time to time, as he prospered, he finally became 
the owner of one of the choice farms in Walworth county, consisting of about 
three hundred acres, which he brought up to a high state of improvement and 
cultivation, on which stands a commodious residence and a substantial set of 
outbuildings, everything about the place denoting thrift and prosperity and 
that a gentleman of excellent tastes has had its management in hand.  Stock 
raising formed no small part of his life work and he is an excellent judge of 
all kinds of live stock.  He has been a progressive farmer, a man who believed 
in adopting modern methods when it was clear that they were better than the 
old, and as a result of his research, study and close attention to general 
agricultural pursuits the soil of his find landed estate today is as rich and 
productive as it was when first reclaimed from the primeval forest. And now as 
the twilight shadows gather softly about him in life's late afternoon, he 
finds himself in the midst of plenty, as a result of his earlier years of 
strenuous endeavor and honest dealings.
 
Mr. HENNESSEY's wife, a faithful helpmeet, a genial, kindly, tender woman, of 
beautiful Christian faith, was summoned to her reward on a higher plane of 
action on February 12, 1906, in her seventy-first year.  She was born in 
county Cork, Ireland, May 26, 1835, the third of a family of three sons and 
five daughters born to Cornelius and Margaret (O'BRIEN) SHANNAHAN.  She grew 
to womanhood and received her education in her native land.  In 1850 she made 
the voyage from Liverpool to Boston, and lived in Vermont until her marriage 
to James HENNESSEY, which union was blessed by the birth of six children, 
namely Mary Elizabeth, deceased; James T.; John E.; Patrick C.; Catherine E., 
deceased; and William A.  The last named son purchased the homestead in 1906 
and he and his wife are very faithful in ministering to every want of our aged 
subject who lives with them.
 
James HENNESSEY has been a devoted member and faithful supporter of the 
Catholic church, which is his supreme comfort in the serene closing days of 
his happy life.  In national politics he has relied for guidance upon the 
advice and leading of Patrick Ford, editor of the Irish World, a paper he has 
read, each successive issue, for forty years or since its first number in 1870.
 
Mr. HENNESSEY is deserving of a great deal of credit for what he has 
accomplished, in view of the fact that he started in life under none too 
favorable auspices and his early environment was all but encouraging.  Coming 
to the practically undeveloped and sparsely settled state of Wisconsin without 
capital or friends, he worked at farm labor by the day until, by economy and 
self-denial, he got together enough money to purchase a forty-acre tract, 
mostly covered with timber, and he set to work with a will clearing the ground 
and preparing it for cultivation.  The work was slow, for there were no modern 
implements of agriculture and oxen were used for the most part to do hauling 
and plowing.  The early settlers depended for their meat supply principally on 
wild game, which was in abundance.  Produce had to be traded, used as a sort 
of medium of exchange, as there was no money.  This was during the first three 
years of the Civil war, and most of that time fifty cents a day was the wage 
scale, and that paid for in produce. But as time passed wages were increased, 
money became more plentiful and the pioneers lived more comfortably.
 
The subject has lived to see wondrous changes during his residence of a half 
century in Walworth county, has lived to see horses replace the oxen, the 
scythe give way to the mowing-machine, the reap-hook supplanted by the self-
binder, and modern labor-saving machinery of all kinds doing the work of 
planting and harvesting formerly done by hand.  He has seen the old-fashioned 
ox-cart and lumber wagon relegated to the rear and carriages, spring-wagons, 
automobiles and even airships take their places. He has lived to see vast 
forest melt away before the sturdy stroke of the axeman and fine farms spring 
up as if by magic, and the country everywhere dotted with substantial 
dwellings in place of the log cabin, schools and churches built in every 
community, and thriving towns and populous cities where once were the tepees 
of the red man or roamed at will the denizens of the wild, and he has seen the 
winding Indian trails changed into costly-turnpikes and broad highways.  He 
has not only been an interested spectator to all these vicissitudes, but has 
played well his part in the transformation.  He can look back over it all with 
a clear mind (the fruits of right living) and recall many interesting 
reminiscences of the past, and recently when he celebrated his eighty-sixth 
birthday he was perfectly happy and in full possession of his faculties, and, 
in looking backward over the chequered path of life, he could recall no 
dishonest act, word or deed.  He has often been heard to state that he is glad 
he never had any desire to become rich, it being his theory that a man is 
happiest when in moderate circumstances, and now in the evening of life he 
gets great comfort and peace in the thought that he bore manfully the labors 
and hardships of long ago, although, indeed often hard to bear and little by 
little gained a competency that has permitted him to spend his declining years 
in honorable retirement.  Every dollar he ever owed he paid cheerfully; he has 
enjoyed the confidence of those with whom he has had business dealings, his 
word being regarded as good if not better than the bond of most men.  Every 
promise he ever made he fulfilled, and he discharged most worthily every trust 
reposed in him.  He has been a loving husband, an indulgent father, his home 
life having been harmonious and ideal, his being a mutually happy and helpful 
household.  He has been a great reader and has familiarized himself with 
current topics and the world's best literature and is a well informed man.  He 
has always been a protectionist, a great admirer of James G. Blaine, Senator 
LaFollette and Colonel Roosevelt.  Although a stanch Republican and usually a 
defender of party principles, he is not a biased partisan and frequently he 
voted the Democratic ticket, and he was a Greenbacker for a time.  In local 
affairs party lines were never drawn, his support invariably going to the 
candidates whom he deemed best qualified to fill the offices sought.  He has 
been a worthy and valued citizen in every respect and is eminently entitled to 
the high esteem which is gladly accorded by all who know him.
 
Submitted by Carol