O'Connor, Henry

Born: 1820-07-26 Dublin, United Kingdom

Died: 1900-11-06 Iowa

Alternate name: O'Conner

Henry O'Connor was a tailor, lawyer, abolitionist, soldier and military officer, public servant, and Republican. He immigrated to the United States as a young adult. Initially trained as a tailor, he studied law in Cincinnati, Ohio, and opened a law practice in Muscatine, Iowa in 1842. O'Connor was an active orator and helped establish the Iowa Republican Party. In 1857, he won election as the district attorney for Iowa's Seventh District. In 1850, he owned just $100 in real estate, but, by 1860, he owned $4,600 in real and personal property. He was married and had at least three children during his lifetime. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the First Iowa Regiment and later earned the rank of major in the Thirty-Fifth Iowa Regiment. He died at the Iowa Soldiers’ Home in Marshalltown, Iowa.

Irving B. Richman, ed., History of Muscatine County Iowa: From the Earliest Settlements to the Present Time (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1911), 1:375; J. M. Dixon, The Valley and the Shadow (New York: Russell Bros., 1868), 117; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Muscatine, Muscatine County, IA, 338; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Muscatine, Muscatine County, IA, 211; Gravestone, Greenwood Cemetery, Muscatine, IA; Semi-Weekly News-Herald (Plattsmouth, NE), 13 November 1900, 3:7.