Jack
McGovern( Irish Ancestor of Senator George McGovern)
and
his son James
James
McGovern: Irish Immigrant, American Pioneer
James McGovern
James McGovern, seventh son of Jack McGovern, spent his early
childhood near Clones, Ireland. He was born there
November 12, 1826. Although not as tall as father, he was five
feet, eleven inches and weighed 185 pounds. A daughter-in-law
(Mary McGuire), describing him in later life, said that his white
beard and hair were always perfectly groomed, his shoes were always
shined, and he wore gloves whenever the weather was cool enough.
Since it was the custom of most poor Catholic Irish families to
give the oldest son the education, it was Patrick who went to
school. Patrick was expected to pass this education to his brothers
and sisters and to act as their counselor in adult life. In fact,
James did learn to read and write and to handle arithmetic up
to and including percent and fractions. As an adult, James was
fully capable of reading an English newspaper from front to back
and kept himself informed on current events.
During James' middle and late teens, there was little work available
in rural Ireland. The potato famine made conditions particularly
difficult for the poor Irish who subsisted mostly on farms. He
went to
England with some of his older brothers and worked on the docks.
The kind of work he performed included loading and unloading cargo,
other manual labor, and occasionally working as a sailor to and
from Ireland on the Irish Sea. Early in 1847, at the age of 21,
James he decided to go to America. He returned to Clones, said
goodbye to his family and friends, and left for New York that
summer by ship. The trip to
New York required nine weeks at sea.
During the potato famine, Irish immigrants were pouring into New
York and other Atlantic ports. When James landed, he went to the
northern part of New York state and got a job mining in the
Adirondack Mountains. He worked through the winter of 1847. In
1848 he found work digging the
Erie Canal in Schenectady, New York. Grueling manual labor in
the mines and on the canals was the kind of work many Irish undertook
to get their first foothold in America.
After he had saved enough money, he returned to Jersey City started
a small grocery business. He worked as a grocer from 1848-1856.
He also continued to write to his childhood sweetheart, Mary Goodwin,
who was still in Ireland. Eventually, she came to
America and they were married on
July 1, 1851.
In 1856, he sold his store and left for Illinois with about $2000
in gold. James, his wife Mary, and four children traveled by railroad
probably to Galesburg. South of Oneida he bought 160 acres of
land; part of it was still uncleared and contained shallow veins
of high-grade soft coal. The remainder of the farm was good crop
land. James managed to hire Swedish immigrants to mine the coal
in winter and farm the land in summer. They also cut timber to
use as supports in the mine. James hauled the coal to
Oneida himself where he sold it to his customers 365 days of the
year.
In 1873, James McGovern went to
Mitchellville, Iowa, to visit his brother-in-law, James McCurnin.
He showed him a 240 acre farm one mile south of his own farm which
was for sale. James bought it and the following spring he sent
his son Joseph and daughter Mary to Iowa to run it. When James
died in 1913, he had a 200 acre farm near Oneida, the 240 acre
farm near Mitchellville and he had sold a 160 acre farm near Bondurant,
Iowa, to Joseph McGovern. He as also had a home in
Galesburg, Illinois, where he spent most of his remaining days.
James said that his life had been interesting since he had witnessed
so many advancements. Among the inventions he named were the match,
steam locomotive, steamship, telegraph, telephone, sewing machine,
and cotton gin. He expressed sympathy for the young whom he said
would not live in such an interesting age since most of the major
inventions already had been made.
James McGovern
with daughters
Mary A., Ella and Julia
