James McConnell

Born September 9, 1836229 or Abt in Donoughmen, North Ireland. 1864: Travelled from County Newry, Ireland to Peterborough, Ontario. He married April 13, 1864, in Drumballyroney/Ballyroney, Country Down, Ireland and worked as linen weaver. He died March 22, 1912, at the home of his son Josiah in Cheam, Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada.

A Linen Weaver from County Down

James McConnell was born around 1836–1837 near Donaghmore, County Down, Ireland, and worked as a linen weaver before marrying Anne Jane Todd on April 13, 1864, in Drumballyroney. The couple emigrated to Canada that year, settling in South Monaghan Township near Peterborough, Ontario, where James worked as a laborer. In the fall of 1873, encouraged by his Ontario neighbor Donald “Father” Gillanders, who had secured him a 160-acre farm on Yale Road in Chilliwack, British Columbia, James moved his family west — by train to San Francisco, steamer up the coast to Victoria, and finally by boat to Chilliwack, where the family spent its first night in the home of fellow settler Isaac Kipp. James cleared the land himself and built a log cabin, later settling near Mount Shannon in the district that became known as Cheam, where he farmed for the rest of his working life and eventually owned some 370 acres.

Farmer and Fairgoer

James built a reputation locally as a successful farmer, winning prizes at the Chilliwack Fair for his apples, barley, and grain and bringing a prize sample of five-and-a-half-foot oat stalks to the local newspaper in 1894. That June, floodwaters rose six inches inside his own house, forcing the family upstairs and requiring a government rescue boat to move his livestock to higher ground; in 1901 a plow accident threw him against the machinery and cut his chin badly enough to need stitches. In 1892 he made a long-anticipated trip home to Ireland to see his aging parents, who he had not visited since first emigrating — he found his mother bedridden but his father still hale, spoke at the Methodist chapel he had attended as a boy, and remarked with regret that the town where he had married had declined through drink even as nearby Banbridge had grown into a manufacturing center.

Municipal Councilor

From 1900 to 1905, James served on the Chilliwack Municipal Council as representative for Ward 6, an office he held through repeated re-election, attending council meetings almost weekly to oversee road grading, bridge repairs, and gravel contracts across the township, and serving on Chilliwack's school board of trustees as early as 1877. Nominated year after year — sometimes unopposed — he became known as a memorable public speaker: at one nomination meeting in 1904 he was met with a roar of applause, removed his overcoat, took “a hearty drink,” and opened by declaring, “Mr. Chairman and gentlemen. I'm sorry I can't say ladies and gentlemen, because there's none here!” to loud, prolonged laughter, going on to speak at length and with a booming voice that echoed through the hall. He was an outspoken opponent of new taxation for dyking and road works even as he championed both causes in principle, and he was not above controversy — in 1904 a local newspaper accused him of voting against his own stated position on a tramway bylaw, seeming to simply follow the reeve's lead.

Church, Lodge, and Later Years

James was a devout and vocal member of the Methodist church for decades — he sang loudly from the front pew and could be heard calling out “Amen” after nearly everything the minister said — and was active for years in the Independent Order of Oddfellows. He traveled often and widely in his later years: to the Methodist camp meetings at Ferndale, Washington, to Victoria and Vancouver for weeks at a stretch, and in 1911, at around age seventy-five, on a four-month trip back to Ireland and Scotland, sailing from Boston on the fast mail steamer Numidian and touring the River Clyde, which he had grown especially fond of. In March 1912 he fell seriously ill, prompting his daughter to cancel her own travel plans and return to nurse him; he died on March 22, 1912, at the Cheam home of his son Josiah. His obituary said “the sturdy and generous characteristics of the Irish were borne out in him.”