Henry Daley was born on April 21, 1825, County Tyrone, in what is today Northern Ireland. He is my wife’s Great-Great-Great Grandfather on a direct maternal line.
Leaving Ireland in 1846, as a 21-year-old, Henry would have to be considered one of the first wave of Great Famine emigrants to leave Ireland. Multiple sources have that he emigrated to the United States as one of 180 passengers, via Liverpool, on the Meteor, arriving April 6, 1846. Available records disagree as to whether the ship landed in New York City or Philadelphia, but in a biography of his son Louis Purcell Daley (Walker, C., History of Macoupin County, Illinois, 1911), it states that Henry spent 3 years in Philadelphia before he arrived in Macoupin county in 1852.
Upon his arrival he was employed building the Chicago & Alton Railroad. By the 1860 census he was “engaged in the grocery business in Carlinville, continuing in this line until 1897, when he withdrew from business activities. He lived in retirement from that time until his death which occurred in 1905 [sic].” (Walker v. 2, p. 566).
A leading citizen in Carlinville, Henry Daily was one of 11 Catholic families in the area, and served as a trustee for the group that built, in 1858, the original structure, known as The Academy, that served as a meeting house for the congregation until the Church of the Immaculate Conception (St. Mary’s) was completed ten years later. (info gathered from an undated Carlinville Democrat newspaper clipping commemorating The Academy at the time of its demolition sometime around 1930).
He married Catherine Purcell on August 15, 1865, in Macoupin, Illinois. They had one son, Louis Purcell Daley, who would go on to be a leading Democrat in Macoupin Country serving in both the Illinois State Legislature, and later as Mayor.
In addition to running the grocery and accumulating farmland (the probate of his will lists 633 acres) Daley also served as one of the original 5 board of directors for the Carlinville Gas Light and Coke Company, which in “December 1869 … began lighting streets, stores, and residences by artificial gas. (Walker v. 1 p. 425).
An 1875 atlas described the Daley Grocery as a “Wholesale and Retail Dealer in Staple and Fancy Groceries, Provisions, Green, Dried, and Canned Fruits, Salt, Tobacco, Cigars, etc. which will be sold Cheap for cash. Also Steamship Agent.”
Henry died on January 11, 1906, and is buried with Kathryn [sic?] in Old Calvary Cemetery, Carlinville, where descendants continue to place flowers every Memorial Day weekend.
NOTES: There is a surprising lack of photographs and/or portraits of Henry or Catherine, which seems curious given their financial standing in the late 19th century. Possibly, if they exist, they were passed down along paternal lines. The lack of digitally available copies of the Carlinville Democrat (1867-2002) and the Macoupin County Enquirer (1880-2002), means that a lot more information about Henry and Carlinville are still available for those who are not afraid of a little microfilm.
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