- HUGH McGAVOCK, now retired from active business life, and
residing at No. 805 Ninth street,
- Beloit, Rock County, has been a potent factor in the development
of that city. He has always been an active and progressive man,
bound to push things, full of enterprise and laudable ambition.
His career is an instructive one, showing as it does what a
brave spirit can accomplish without adventitious aid, if the
man will only persevere and be strong in himself.
- Mr. McGAVOCK was born in County Antrim, Ireland, Jan. 26,
1828, a son of Alexander and
- Sarah (DEVLIN) McGAVOCK, both natives of Ireland. They were
the parents of four sons and two daughters, and emigrated to
the United States in 1847, settling at Fox Lake, Ill., where
the senior McGAVOCK bought an eighty-acre farm, partially improved,
and 120 acres of government land wholly unimproved. There he
spent the remained of his life, but died in Beloit, where on
a visit to that city in 1861, having reached the age of seventy
years. His wife died about 1854. Both were loyal Catholics.
His father, Patrick McGAVOCK, was a farmer, and died in Ireland
when eighty-five. He had a family of four sons and two daughters.
The father of Mrs. Alexander McGAVOCK, Patrick DEVLIN, died
in Ireland, when about eighty years old. He was a farmer, and
reared a family of four daughters and three sons.
- Hugh McGAVOCK received his schooling in Ireland and was a
young man of nineteen years of
- age when he accompanied his parents to this country. He
soon went into business for himself, and began contracting on
the construction of the old Galena railroad, now a part of the
Northwestern system. This work proved profitable, and he followed
it for twenty years or more on a large scale. In 1852 Mr. McGAVOCK
came to Beloit and bought a farm of 444 acres in the township
of Beloit, which is still in his possession. He has taken much
interest in the development of farm property in southern Wisconsin,
investing his money freely in it, and at one time owned as many
as 800 acres. He has sold much of it, but still has extensive
real-estate interests in and around Beloit, particularly a forty-acre
tract that is laid off in town lots. In the city he owns two
houses which he rents and for the past nine years he has occupied
his present home on Ninth street, built by him and designed to
b!
e his home as long as he shall live.
- Hugh McGAVOCK and Miss Catharine BUCKLEY were married in
Janesville, Wis., Feb. 1, 1857. Mrs. McGAVOCK is a daughter
of John and Margaret (FITZGERALD) BUCKLEY, of Janesville, and
has become the mother of nine sons and two daughters: (1) Alexander,
the first born, is a grocer and market man at 3108 State street,
Chicago; he married (first) Velmy SMITH, who bore him six children,
but one of whom, John Francis, is yet living. She died in 1886,
and Alexander then wedded Kate EAGAN, by whom he had one son,
Stephen. (2) John is a grocer in Beloit, and is unmarried.
(3) Hugh, Jr., is a coal, wood and lumber dealer in Beloit; he
married Catharine FINDLEY, and is the father of five children,
Thomas, Genevieve, Lilah, Marion and Hugh. (4) William (1),
born May 5, 1862, died Nov. 1, 1863 (5) William (2), a farmer
and stone quarryman at Beloit, married Mame CANTWELL, and has
three children, Kittie, Mildred and the baby. (6) Patrick runs
a grocery and meat market at 917 West 63d street, Chicago; he
married Maude LYNCH, and has one child, Josephine. (7) Thomas,
a merchant in Chicago, is unmarried. (8) James is a contractor
at Chicago Heights; he married Alice McMINIMENT. (9) Charlotte
is bookkeeper and cashier for her brother Patrick in Chicago.
(10) Edward is in the meat business in Chicago. (11) Mary is
at home.
- Mr. and Mrs. McGAVOCK are members of the Catholic Church.
He is a Democrat, and is a
- stanch advocate of the time-honored principles of his party.
Mr. McGAVOCK has been a very successful man in all his business
undertakings. Starting in life a poor boy, he has achieved results
of which any man might be proud. He has given all his children
a good start in life, and like him they are progressive and enterprising.
He has been a resident of Beloit for forty-nine years, and has
seen this beautiful city develop from a small village. He has
friends in the South, where Gen. John McGAVOCK, a relative of
his, was an officer in the Confederate army. Mr. McGAVOCK had
a great-uncle who was a soldier under Gen. Washington in the
Revolutionary army, and in after years became an eminent civil
engineer. On his mother's side he had relatives who came to
America in 1798, during the rebellion in Ireland. Mrs. McGAVOCK's
parents were early settlers in Janesville, coming from Ireland
and!
settling there in 1849.
-
- Taken from "Commemorative Biographical Record of
the Counties of Rock, Green, Grant, Iowa and Lafayette Wisconsin"
(c)1901, pp. 794-795.
-
- Courtesy of Carol
|