John Paine Keenan (1824 - 1901)

Born 7 Feb 1824 in Greene County, Pennsylvania, United States

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 25 Jul 1901 at age 77 in Morgantown, Monongalia County, West Virginia, United States

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Biography

From "A History of the State of Oklahoma" pp. 143-144

"In 1845, Hugh Keenan having remarried, the family, except Richard, drifted with the throng of western homeseekers to Iowa and located in Linn county of that state, about ten miles east from Cedar Rapids. At that time there were no railroads to the west, and travel was by water and overland. The company embarked at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and floated down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and thence by the Mississippi to Davenport, Iowa. John P. Keenan earned his passage by stoking the boat on its journey. The country was new in Iowa then ; and there was some danger of fever and chills along the water ways and low places. The party located a claim, built a cabin, broke the prairie and raised a crop of corn. John [Paine] Keenan, being one of the victims to the chills and fever, made up his mind to return to Pennsylvania. So he offered his crop of corn for sale in the field. The price he got seems now remarkably low, five cents a bushel. Not having sufficient means to pay his passage back to civilization he gathered wild hops and sacked them and had them hauled In the Mississippi and forever turned his back on what seemed to him fever stricken Iowa. With the sale of hops to supplement the fund received from his corn he found his way safely to Pennsylvania, where his health was soon restored, but he had lost zeal for western adventure, Hugh Keenan sand family, including the second set of children by the second wife, remained in Iowa, where he died in 1873. The location in Linn county was a good one, and some of the best farming land in the state is found in the vicinity of Springville and west to the Cellar river.

In 1853 John [Paine] Keenan married Nancy Scott, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth LazzeII (born BowIby) and settled on a farm in Virginia, near Morgantown, now West Virginia, where he died. He had but one term of school in all his life. He was self educated to the extent of the three rules—reading, writing and arithmetic. He kept himself well informed on what went On in the world according to what the newspapers said. He was a Democrat in polities, but he believed in America against the world and the Union above the rights of the states. When the rebellion was begun at Fort Sumter by firing on the flag he was actuated by one sentiment—the preservation of the Union. He gave his adherence to the administration of Abraham Lincoln, offered his services to the Union army, which was declined on account of his health, and he never again voted the Democratic ticket. Thomas Lazzell, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was one of the largest land owners in his section and a firm believer in the evil of slavery, and his was one of the two votes cast for Lincoln in his township in 1860. And it was he and men like John P. Keenan who put that county (Monongalia) in the Republican list in West Virginia, where it has er since remained. Nancy Scott Keenan still survives, and her children are Leonidas H., a lawyer at Elkins, West Virginia, Bruce Lazzell, hereafter further mentioned; Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Davis, of Morgantown, West Virginia; and Thomas Grant and .John Franklin, who reside on the home farm near the same place."

Sources

• * 1900 US Census
• http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=92669177&
• A History of the State of Oklahoma, Volume 2 By Luther B. Hill,pp. 140-145

• Iowa Marriages, 1809-1992", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XJGG-C3B : 13 January 2020), Elizabeth Linton in entry for James Keenan, 1894.

• Unsourced family tree handed down to Candy Brown