Sheahan, James W.

Born: 1824-02-22 Baltimore, Maryland

Died: 1883-06-17 Chicago, Illinois

James W. Sheahan was a lawyer, journalist, author, and newspaper editor. He moved to Washington, DC with his parents as a child. He earned admittance to the bar in 1845, but also became involved in journalism. Initially, his journalistic work consisted of compiling reports from the U.S. Congress for the New York Associated Press. He married Mary Elizabeth Drury in May 1848, and the couple eventually had at least nine children together. After meeting Stephen A. Douglas while covering the 1847 Illinois Constitutional Convention, Sheahan became more involved in the Democratic Party press. Douglas enlisted Sheahan to work as a Democratic journalist in Chicago, installing him at the Chicago Times in 1854. Sheahan was editor of the paper by 1856, and turned it into the primary Democratic mouthpiece in Illinois —if not the entire Midwest. When Douglas ran for president in 1860, Sheahan wrote a lengthy biography, The Life of Stephen A. Douglas, which was primarily an extended campaign document. He sold the Chicago Times to Cyrus H. McCormick that same year. By 1861, Sheahan worked for the Chicago Post, where he remained throughout the Civil War, but he sold the paper in April 1865.

Patricia B. Swan and James B. Swan, "James W. Sheahan: Stephen A. Douglas Supporter and Partisan Chicago Journalist" Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 105 (Summer-Fall 2012), 133-66; Chicago Tribune (IL), 18 June 1883, 5:4; Washington, D.C., U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1826-1850, 25 May 1848, Washington, DC (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2000); U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 1, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 123; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Ward 10, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 296; U.S. Census Office, Tenth Census of the United States (1880), Chicago, Cook County, IL, 5; Gravestone, Calvary Catholic Cemetery, Evanston, IL.