McDONNELL FAMILY BIOGRAPHY
BOOK - MEET SHIELDSVILLE by MARY L. HAGERTY. 1940. THE MC DONNELLS came from Louth, Ireland. Their first years in America were spent in New Orleans. There they worked on the levees and finally came up the Mississippi to St. Paul and then to Shieldsville in 1856. There were two brothers, George and Jim (Red Jim) and Red Jim’s brother-in-law, Black Jim. Red Jim was my grandfather and he told us this way about their leaving New Orleans: “And there! says I, to myself, ‘We’re going wherever we go,’ But where we’ll be when we get there, It’s never a know I’ll know.” Red Jim (we called him Grandpa Jim) was born with energy and willingness to use it. He married Black Jim’s sister, Rose. The McDonnell’s chose adjoining farms in section 5, Shieldsville, and there they stayed. Rose died in 1870 and left a family of small children. they were John, James, Mary, Owen, Sarah, Lawrence, and Rose. James married Miss Mary O’Connell and had a blacksmith shop in Montgomery and Shieldsville. Their children are Annie, Joe, Will, Larry (deceased), Arthur (deceased), Emmit, Theresa, and Agnes. They moved to Minneapolis some years ago and it was there that James met his death in a street car accident in 1926. John went to Winnipeg, Canada, in his youth and never became very well known here; Owen died in 1886; Mary married Noah Canton and moved to Messena Springs, New York. She had five daughters and died in 1930. Sarah McDonnell and Edmund Hagerty, my parents, were married in 1887. She died in 1901. Lawrence married Miss Elizabeth Hutchinson in 1894. Their children are Mary (Mrs. Niel Hicky), and James (twins). James married Miss Alice Brown in 1919 and is on the St. Paul police force; Edmund died in Elgin, Illinois, in 1935; George married Miss Mary Cooney of Kilkenny and lives in St. Paul. Charley lives in Morris, Minnesota. Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence McDonnell are dead. Rose married Owen Collar and lived at Morris. She died in 1936. Grandpa Jim’s second wife was Mrs. Catherine Simpson Ferguson, widow of James Ferguson and sister of Mrs. Patrick Hurley. They were natives of County Monahan, Ireland. As Mary Hurley called her “Aunty,” she was known to everyone as “Aunty McDonnell”. I always thought she was a very old, old woman and I find that at the time of her death she was fifty-one years old! Black Jim McDonnell married Miss Bridget Reilly, a sister of Bryan Reilly. In their family were James, who married Miss Elizabeth Mulveyhill and lived in Minneapolis. He died in 1926; Patrick married Miss Catherine Rouin. They also lived in Minneapolis. They are the parents of Sister M. Donald who is well known at Bethlehem Academy. Patrick died in 1910; Bridget married Michael Varley and though her home is not very far from Shieldsville, she belongs to the Immaculate Conception parish, Faribault. Eliza was a Dominican nun, sister M. Herman. She died in 1937. Mary married Clem McCann and lived in Minneapolis; Christy married Elizabeth McShane. They lived here a few years, moved to Faribault, and then to Spokane, Washington, where he died in 1928. Mrs. McDonnell died in 1930. They are the parents of Father Christy McDonnel S.J. George McDonnelll was a gentleman, unafraid. He had the mein of a noble man so he was promptly nick-named “Lord George.” He had a big, white gate in front of his place which was a land mark. In giving directions to travelers, it was customary to say, “so many miles this way or that, from the Lord’s gate.” He was a trustee of the first church, a position which he held till he died. It was he was mortgaged his farm to help pay the carpenters who built the first church. He also voiced his objections to plate collections. He had one son, Eugene, who married Miss Mary McCullough and their children were George, John, and Mary (Mrs. Dardis).