Person:James Sheehan (1)

By family tradition, James Sheehan was from County Cork, in the southern part of Ireland. He was born about 1772-3, and came to Pennsylvania sometime before the year 1810. It is possible that he came as an indentured servant to Philadelphia between 1785 and 1795, a time when half of that city’s immigrants were young, poor, Irish Catholics from the southern half of Ireland.

However he spent the years after his arrival, in 1810 he was living in Centre County, Pennsylvania, in Bald Eagle Township on Muncy Mountain. He was a farmer, and married by then, and he and his wife, Margaret, had two small children – a boy, David, and an infant daughter named Eleanor.

Between 1810 and 1813, James and Margaret acquired some land in Halfmoon Township, in another part of Centre County to the south and west of their place on Muncy Mountain. Originally called Warrior’s Mark, the township had been named for the symbol of a half moon that Native Americans had earlier carved on trees throughout the valley. In November of 1813 James Sheehan, by then living in the Halfmoon Valley, probably close to Buffalo Run, bought an adjacent tract of land from neighbors John and Margaret Whitson for the sum of fifty dollars, increasing the size of his property. Over the next few years he acquired more land that was patented to him by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1816 and which amounted by that time to probably about 100 acres. Eventually he and Margaret would own 192 acres in the Halfmoon Valley.

During their remaining years in that valley, the size of their family increased as well. Margaret would give birth to at least four more daughters – Margaret, Jane, Elizabeth and Kesiah – and another son, James.

Though James had probably been raised as a Catholic, he and Margaret belonged to the Methodist Church during their years together in the Halfmoon Valley. In 1825, James was one of seven men who together bought a half acre of land in that valley on which to build a place of worship for members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and were the first trustees of that church.

In 1829, James and Margaret sold their land in the Half Moon Valley and moved on, taking with them their seven children, the oldest, David then being about twenty one and the youngest, Kesiah, only a year old. James was then in his sixties, and Margaret was close to fifty.

They may have settled for a while in the northwest corner of Ohio. There, in the 1830’s, James Sheehan owned 80 acres of land in Putnam County and 160 acres of land in adjacent Henry County. If they did actually live in either county, it was neither for long nor for good, for they were residing in Montgomery County, Ohio by the autumn of 1833 at the very latest. In February of 1834 their daughter, Eleanor, married Isaac Stansell there.

Whatever their reasons for leaving Pennsylvania, a financial incentive, and the desire to acquire lands that were favorable to cultivation for their sons, then coming of age, would certainly have played an important part in their decision to go. In 1829, James and Margaret had sold their 192 acres of land in Pennsylvania for forty five hundred dollars; in 1835, James was able to buy 160 acres of land in Montgomery County for only two hundred dollars. On June 2, 1835, James was at the Federal Land Office in Wapakoneta, Ohio, some 75 miles to the north, where he purchased the land for his farm in Washington Township in Montgomery County.

The Sheehan family began the work of clearing their land in Washington Township for a farm and building a home. The land extended for one half of a mile along the west side of a toll pike road. The long road traveled earlier by the Robbins family divided their land, the road running mostly north and south, though it curved sharply to the east at the north end to connect with the toll pike road. In time the toll pike road would be known as Main Street in Centerville. In time the long road running north and south on which their farm lay and their home stood would come to be known as Sheehan Road.

Though they had belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania, in Ohio James and Margaret were Baptists. Perhaps this was a matter of convenience, with the Sugar Creek Baptist Church being not at all far from where the Sheehans lived.

James lived only a few short years after the family’s move to Montgomery County. It may be that the work of clearing the land and establishing a farm took too heavy a toll on a man of his age. Early in the year of 1838 he drew up and signed a last will and testament. Soon thereafter, on April 30, 1838, at the age of 66, James Sheehan died. He was buried in the cemetery of the Sugar Creek Baptist Church.

Margaret survived her husband for 17 years, her younger son, James, remaining with his mother to work the part of the original farm that would one day be his. The remainder of the original farm was divided among James’s brothers and sisters, and his oldest sister, Eleanor, and her husband, Isaac Stansell, soon bought this remainder from the various heirs. In the will he bequeathed a half quarter section of land in Putnam County to his grandson, James Stansell, son of his daughter, Eleanor. He also mentioned also willed this same half quarter section to his grandson, James Stansell, son of Isaac Stansell. He also mentioned a quarter section of land that he owned in Henry County which "may not be sold until my youngest daughter shall be of lawful age..." His youngest daughter was Kesiah, born in 1828.

In September of 1854, Margaret’s son, James, would bring his bride, Susan Jane Pine, to live in the farmhouse there. In March of the following year, Margaret Sheehan died, and she was laid to rest beside her husband.

James and Susan Sheehan raised five sons and a daughter in the home on Sheehan Road, and made their living from the farm, and in time some of the land would be divided among their sons, giving rise to several more farms on Sheehan Road. The old family home, with the farmland surrounding it, would pass from James and Susan to their youngest son, James Elmer Sheehan, called Elmer by his family.

Elmer Sheehan in time would marry and raise his own family in the same house, and make his own living from the land settled by his grandparents and their children. Throughout his life, Elmer Sheehan would tell his children and grandchildren about how his grandfather had come from Ireland, from County Cork, a place where there were as many Sheehans “as there are Smiths and Jones in America.”

At the Sugar Creek Baptist Cemetery, James Sheehan is buried in the 9th Row, position #16 beginning from the north end, with his wife, Margaret, beside him, and James A. Kindle on the other side.