Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 08.djvu/136

 OHARA

O'lIARA

of his physician, started for California. He niaJe the voyage until nearingAcapulco, Mexico, when he died at sea, and his remains were temporarily interred on reaching Acapulco. The body was subseipiently brouglit back to Worcester. Mass., and buried in the college churchyard. The date of Iiis deatli is Dec. 15, 1878.

0'H.\RA, James, soldier and pioneer, was born in county Mayo, Ireland, in 1752. He was educated in Ireland, England and France; was clerk in a Liverpool counting-house, 1770-71, and immigrated to America in 1773, landing in Philadelphia, and becoming an Indian trader at Kuskusky, an Indian town in what is now Laurence county. Pa. He was a general agent among the Indians until 1776, when he was made captain of a company recruited for the Patriot army. In 1781 he was made assistant quarter- master, settled his accounts with the govern- ment at Piiiladelphia in 1783. and returned to "Officers' Orchard" above Fort Pitt, with his newly-wedded wife Mary, daughter of William Carson, a Scottish gentleman of Philadelpliia. Captain O'Hara was given a contract to provision the western army commanded by General Har- mon, and this brought him into contact with all the U.S. forts from Oswego, N.Y., to Natchez, Miss., 17.S;3-90. He was commissioned quarter- master-general of the U.S. army in 1792, and resigned in 1796, but continued as an army con- tractor until 1802. He built a saw mill in 1796, and also, in company witii Maj. Isaac Craig, the glass works at Allegheny, the first erected west of the AUeghanies, at a cost of over $30,000. He also engaged in shipbuilding and trading in furs and cotton, extending his operations to Europe. In 1816 he was interested with John Henry Hopkins, afterward bishop of Vermont, in the manufacture of iron at the Old Hermitage furnace, Ligonier, Pa., wiiich venture proved disastrous to Hopkins. As early as Nov. 9, 177:]. he purchased 400 acres of land on Coalpit run, Pittsburg, and other exten- sive tracts of land in and about the future citj-. He entertained Louis Philippe, General Moreau and other famous French officers at his home, welcoming them in their native tongue, which he spoke fluently. His sons, William Carson, James and Ciiarles, died without issue before the death of General O'Hara, and Mrs. 0"Hara survived tliem all, dying, April 8, 1834, aged 73 years. He died at Pittsburg, Pa., Dec. 21, 1819.

O'HARA, Theodore, i)oet, was born in Danville, Ky.. Feb. 11. 1820; son of Kane O'Hara, the distinguished teacher, who was exiled from Ireland and came to Kentucky with his father and brothers late in the eighteenth cfntury. He prepared for college under his fatlier and was graduated at St. Joseph's college, Bardstown. Ky., with first honors. He was professor of Greek in

St. Joseph's collfege during his .senior year; stud- ied law; was admitted to the bar, and settled in practice, but soon abandoned it for journalism. He was assistant editor of the Kentucky Yeoman at Frankfort and editor of the Tocsin or Demo- cratic Rally, a cam- paign paper of 1844. He served in the U.S. treasury department at Washington, D.C., 1845-46 and enlisted in the Mexican war as a volunteer. He was commissioned captain in the U.S. army and appointed assistant quartermaster of vol- unteers, June 26, 1846. He served on the staff of General Franklin Pierce, and was bre- vetted major, Aug. 20, 1847, for gallant and meritorious conduct in the battles of Contreras and Ch urubusco. He was hon- orably discharged, Oct. 15, 1848; practiced law in Washington, D.C., for a time, and edited the Times and Sun in Louisville, Ky., 1854-55. He was employed by the Tehuantepec railroad company and met Narcisso Loj^ez, the Cuban liberator, in 3Iexico, from whom he accepted the commission of colonel. He joined the first Cuban expedition in 1851, and commanded a regiment at the battle of Cardenas, where he was severely' wounded and compelled to return to the United States. He assisted Col. William Walker in the oi'ganization of his expedition to Central America, and while trying to escape the vigilance of the U.S. authorities, was arrested and indicted with General Henderson at New Orleans, charged with violating the neutrality laws, but the government failed in the prosecution. He entered the U.S. army as captain in the 2d cavalry, Marcii 3, 1855, and served on the Texas frontier until he resigned, Dec. 1, 1856. He was editor of the Mobile Register, 1856-61, during the absence of Jolin Forsyth as U.S. Minister to Mexico. He entered the Con- federate army in 1861, and was soon after commissioned captain and placed in command of Fort McRoa, at the entrance of Mobile Bay, which he defended until ordered to evacuate. He be- came colonel of the 12th Alabama regiment, and served at Shiloh on the staff of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, and then on tiie staff of Gen. John C. Breckinridge. He engaged in the cotton business in Columbia. Ga., after the war, but lost everything by fire and retired to a planta- tion in Alabama. His two poems, The Bix-onac of the Dead and .1 Dirge for the Brave Old Pioneer, established his fame as a poet. He died