Cornelius Madigan

1820s–1840s

Born near Limerick, Ireland — the records place it anywhere from 1826 to the mid-1840s.

1850s–1860s

Emigrated young: first to Canada around age ten, then work as a logger in Michigan, before reaching Oregon about 1869–70.

1870s

Married Anna Murphy, from County Wicklow, and settled in Portland.

1920s

Died at his Portland home on 8 May 1924, and was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery.

From Limerick to Portland, by Way of Canada and Michigan

Cornelius Madigan was born near Limerick, Ireland — the documents disagree sharply on the year, ranging from the 1820s to the mid-1840s — and left for North America while still a boy, settling first in Canada around age ten and later working as a logger in Michigan before finally reaching Portland, Oregon, around 1869 or 1870. He married Anna Murphy, herself an immigrant from County Wicklow, at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Portland on October 13, 1875, and the couple settled on a lot at Northwest 17th and Flanders Streets that Cornelius had acquired around 1873 and where he would live for the rest of his life.

A Teamster's Portland

For nearly forty years Cornelius made his living as a teamster, truckman, and expressman on the streets of Portland, working through the 1880s and '90s for the Oregon Transfer Company and, from 1898, the North Pacific Lumber Company, hauling freight between the city's docks, mills, and rail yards. He lost part of a finger working on construction of the Steel Bridge across the Willamette. In his later years he took steadier watchman's posts — at the Columbia Engineering Works and then Columbia Steel Company — and his grandson Peter recalled his last job as a grade-crossing watchman for the railroad at Northwest 17th and Upshur. From 1872 he was also a member of the volunteer Couch Fire Company; living only two blocks from the firehouse, he was often first to the bell and so most often collected the volunteers' traditional prize, a two-gallon keg of whiskey, for being first to arrive.

Family and Final Years

Cornelius could read slowly but, by his grandson's account, never learned to write. He was diagnosed with colorectal cancer around 1921 and spent his final years in declining health, still living in the Flanders Street house he had held for half a century. He died there on May 8, 1924, and was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery, later moved to Mount Calvary.