Keegan, James W.

KEEGAN, OMEARA

Posted By: Roseanna Zehner
Date: 7/22/2006 at 16:16:24

KEEGAN, JAMES W.

James W. Keegan is one of the younger agriculturists of Lyon County, and that knowledge and skill which should characterize the modern farmer mark his management of the family estate in Doon Township. He gives the closest attention to his work, and is becoming widely known as one of the progressive and up-to-date tillers of the earth in this part of the state.

Mr. Keegan was born in 1868 on a farm in Clinton County, Iowa, where his father, James Keegan, of Irish birth, had long been established. The father who came to this country was an old settler in Lyon County, where he died in March 1895.

James W. Keegan was the youngest born in a family of four children, and grew to manhood in Clinton County, where he was inured to hard farm work and trained to steady labor. When his parents removed to Lyon County in 1886, he assisted them in their removal to what was then a frontier, and assisted his father in the development of the farm, being the southwest quarter of section 31, Doon Township. He remained with his father until the death of that gentleman in 1895. From 1893 he ran the farm as a family concern with his brother until 1895, when the property was divided. James W. Keegan now owns a place comprising one hundred and ninety acres, all cultivated, and provided with a most desirable set of farm buildings and a grove that was planted in 1888.

Mr. Keegan was married in 1897 to Miss Katie O'Meara, a daughter of John O'Meara and a native of Clinton County, Iowa. By this union Mr. Keegan has become the father of four children: Florence, Percy, Clarence and Irma. Both he and his wife are well thought of in the community, where they have many friends and well wishers, won at first by their open hearted kindliness, but retained by solid worth and genuine character.

Source: Compendium of History Reminiscence and Biography of Lyon County, Iowa. Published under the Auspices of the Pioneer Association of Lyon County. Geo. Monlun, Pres.; Hon. E. C. Roach Sec’y; and Col. F. M. Thompson, Historian. Geo. A. Ogle & CO., Published, Engravers and Book Manufacturers. Chicago, 1904-1905

Transcribed by Roseanna Zehner, Darlene Jacoby and Diane Johnson