Preserving Irish Traditional Music in Chicago: Francis O'Neill

Tralibane, County Cork

Youth in Ireland

Hailing from Tralibane, Co. Cork, Ireland, Francis O’Neill’s life adventures took him all around the world, saw him experience a variety of professions, encounter people of diverse ethnicities, lead the police force of America’s second largest city at the turn of the twentieth century, collect music from Ireland’s Chicago-based diaspora, and invest well and work hard to provide a good life in America’s Midwest for his wife, Anna, and their family.

O’Neill was born on August 28, 1848 as Ireland was emerging out of the great famine. He was the youngest of seven children born to John O’Neill and Catherine O’Mahony, and despite the devastation that struck many towns and villages in this southwestern part of the country at that time, John O’Neill’s ownership of land and property in and about Tralibane afforded the family a comfortable existence. Education was clearly valued and both Irish and English were heard spoken and sung in the O’Neill household. In his own memoirs, Chief O’Neill’s Sketchy Recollections of an Eventful Life in Chicago (edited by his great-granddaughter Mary Lesch and historian Ellen Skerrett), O’Neill recalls how childhood evenings were frequently spent listening to his father read the newspaper to family and visiting neighbors, immediately followed by a translation in Irish for native speakers.[1]

By the time the young O’Neill attended the local national school in the nearby village of Dromore, he had already learned to read, thus beginning a passion for learning that stayed with him throughout his life. When he later moved to Bantry National School, his teacher there affectionately referred to him as “Philosopher O’Neill.” The young Francis was successful in a range of subjects including Greek, Latin, and math, an area in which he excelled, and by the age of twelve he became a junior monitor or tutor,[2] and by fourteen, a senior monitor and teacher.[3]

His musical education was first nurtured in the home of Dónal and Mary O’Mahony, his maternal grandparents, who regularly hosted musical evenings featuring traveling musicians passing through West Cork. Immersed in these gatherings, Francis’s mother, Kit, could acquire a canon of songs with ease. O’Neill explained that she was blessed with “a keen ear, a retentive memory, and an intense love of the haunting melodies of their race.” [4]

Talented also as an artist, O’Neill had hoped his love of sketching and drawing would lead him to study at the School of Design in Cork, but that was not a prospect his parents valued.[5] When O’Neill fortuitously lost out on an opportunity to teach at a Christian Brother’s school in the city, he followed his desire to travel -- a desire that took him from the docks of Cork in the spring of 1865 on the first of many adventures across the waters of the world over the next four years. The places he visited and the people he met were so far removed from the simple life he had left behind. Although he embraced the adventures that life was to afford him, O’Neill kept his homeland close to his heart.

Life on the Sea

From 1865-1869, O’Neill’s travels took him first to England, then to Egypt, and from there to Russia. His second major voyage on the British-owned Jane Duncan saw him travel from England to Bulgaria, and back to Scotland. On his third voyage, O’Neill worked aboard the Emerald Isle, and it was on this voyage he met his future wife, Anna Rogers, traveling with her family to New York. Aboard the Louisa Anne in 1866, he traveled to Brunswick, Georgia, and on to St. Croix in the West Indies. Later that year O’Neill’s first voyage on the Minnehaha took him from New York to Yokohama, Japan, and on to Hawaii. From there, a voyage to Baker Island in the central Pacific Ocean followed, and while unloading the cargo, the ship was wrecked in a sudden swell. The crew was later rescued by a passing ship, Zoe, and while this journey saw many suffer grave illness, O’Neill survived through the kindness of a fellow musician who shared his meager food rations, and made it safely back to Honolulu, Hawaii. Three more round trips followed before returning to dry land in San Francisco, California. (See International Travels)

Having spent time in a small number of America’s ports, O’Neill was keen to explore more of the country, but after a few short months of shepherding in the Sierra Nevada mountains, he returned to sea for three more voyages: the first to Culiacan, Mexico; the next, onwards to Cape Horn; and the third, and last of the young Corkman’s great sea journeys, back to America, where he was to spend the rest of his life.[6]

One additional journey was a return visit to Ireland in 1867, the year of O’Neill’s father’s passing.[7] Including this, Francis’s travels totaled in the region of some 62,000 miles across the four years of his maritime career.

His own recollections highlight his interest in all he encountered and learned. In great detail and with keen fascination, O’Neill described the sea journeys, the land features of new places, the traditions, customs, and appearances of the people and his interactions with them, and their religious beliefs and practices. He spoke of the cargos they carried and traded, the range of duties he fulfilled on each voyage under the direction of often kind, but occasionally uncaring captains, and the sometimes harrowing events that brought the young seaman close to death on more than one occasion.

Francis O'Neill and Anna Rogers O'Neill

Summer Home, Ocean Springs, Mississippi

Onward to Chicago

After a short spell in a teaching position in Edina, Missouri in the winter of 1869, O’Neill ventured north where he sailed for one shipping season on the Great Lakes. One striking difference on these short voyages compared with his four years at sea, was that all of the crew were fellow Irishmen. When the season was over O’Neill planned to return to teaching in Edina. On route, he visited with the Rogers family in Normal, IL whom he had previously met on his first voyage to America, and rather than continue on to his destination, O'Neill stayed, rekindled his friendship with Anna Rogers (with whom he had remained in contact over the course of his travels), and the two married later in the same year.

Together with his new wife, Anna, they arrived in Chicago following the Great Fire of 1871. Work was scarce and O’Neill noted, “Without relatives or friends it is always difficult to obtain employment, especially in winter,”[8] but learning new skills to make his way was something O’Neill had done since he was 16, and in the two years that followed, he took work where he could find it; in a packing house, a lumber yard, in the railroad service, and in the wholesale dry goods business – all of the industries that contributed largely to the commercial growth and advances in engineering that helped to rebuild Chicago after the Great Fire. 

A moment of kindness by Alderman William Tracey, who offered his support to O’Neill’s application for the Chicago Police Force, secured him a starting position as a patrol officer – a career that was to last 32 years and see him rise through the ranks to become General Superintendent (or as he was more affectionately known, Chief O’Neill), for two terms from 1901-1905.[9] (See The Chief)

Though pleased with the greater financial security his new position offered to the young couple, Francis and Anna also suffered great sadness in the early years of their marriage. Their first four children – John, John, Mary, and Francis – died between 1871 and 1876. A fourth son, Philip, died at 3 years old in 1885, and many years later, tragedy struck again when their youngest son, Rogers, died in 1904, at age 18. Four daughters - Julia, Anne, Caroline, and May - survived, but one cannot begin to imagine the heartache they must have endured, and their strength and resilience to carry on with their lives 

Husband, father, and policeman were new chapters in Francis’s life when he reached Chicago, but O’Neill the Irish man and musician was one and the same who left Tralibane and traveled the world. Though he packed his flute, hardship led him to sell it very early on in his sailing days, and it was not until his time aboard the rescue ship Zoe, in the Pacific Ocean, that O’Neill makes reference to music in his memoirs again. But music was to return to his life in abundance when he settled in Chicago, and was to lead to publications of Irish traditional music gathered and compiled over three decades of his time on the police force, leading to the first of many publications in 1903. (see The Music and The Publications)

Page from O'Neill's Scrapbook Collection

An Gaodhal (The Gael), 1899, Cover Page

Summary Page of An Gaodhal (The Gael) Handwritten by O'Neill

A Scholar and a Gentleman

O’Neill’s studious nature and deep curiosity about many topics led him to invest not only in his work and music, but also to the study of nature, art and architecture, history, poetry and literature, broader global issues, and aspects of Irish life, both back in Ireland, and here in Chicago.[10]

An avid reader from when he was a young boy, O’Neill’s affection for books lasted throughout his life. They were key companions while he was at sea, and tales of swimming from his ship to another to trade books with fellow seamen, often at the risk of retribution from his captain, showed how invested he was in this pastime.[11] Later in life, acquiring books and periodicals became a passion. His personal library, which was donated to the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1931, contained some 1,500 publications dating back to 1692. The O'Neill Collection, which Francis O'Neill divided thematically into his Hibernicana, or Irish-interest collection, and his music collection, includes a large number of books on Irish antiquities, history, biography, folklore, literature and poetry, some valuable Irish and Irish-American periodicals, and a large and valuable collection of books on music and musicians. Pages of his books have many brief annotations in their margins.[12]

Many detailed descriptions of flora, fauna, and oceanic features are given by O’Neill in his memoirs. He observes the behaviors of migrating birds on route to Alexandria, notes how the vastness of the Black Sea was “forbidding and cheerless,”[13] describes an altercation with an eagle in the West Indian waters that the young O’Neill proudly won,[14] and references “the volcanic peaks of St. Paul and Amsterdam islands far out in the Indian Ocean”[15] as they sailed to Japan. It was in his description of this same journey that O’Neill shares his knowledge of the dangers of the Java Sea, and the challenges the weather conditions posed on deck.[16]

One of his pastimes while living in Chicago was to keep scrapbooks containing articles and cuttings that represented an eclectic variety of interests; blogging of the early 20^thcentury, one might say. And among the hundreds of items that O’Neill detailed in these collections, his love of nature was revealed through articles about animals, images and poems about landscapes, and etchings depicting the forces of the elements. An aspiring artist as a young boy, O’Neill’s keen eye for art and architecture emerges here too. His scrapbooks contain many random images of buildings and statues of note from America and around the world, portraits of dignitaries, and sketches of ordinary folk carrying out everyday chores. 

Many articles regarding the Chicago Police Department, and about O’Neill himself as Chief and musician, appear in the collection, but the largest category of this diverse compilation is all-things-Irish. Dozens of articles and images recount historical events, Irish-Chicago political and social occasions, Irish poems and songs, photographs, and tributes to Irish and Irish-American historical, religious, and sporting figures. Though O’Neill only returned to Ireland once after he settled in Chicago, these collections and his publications show how he was always emotionally and culturally connected to his home country.

As a man, O’Neill was known throughout his career to have shown great integrity and honor. Surrounded by a culture of nepotism, he managed to avoid favored assistance to promotion through the ranks, or to succumb to the corruption of the Irish and Italian mobsters of 1900s Chicago, or to nefarious members of the police force.[17] He cherished order and was fastidious in recording details; be they in the ships’ logs that he was assigned to keep, the annual police reports from 1901-1904, or the information and notation collated on almost 3,000 Irish tunes.

O’Neill was thought to be a fair and reasonable soul and his appointment to the position of Chief was a popular choice.[18] He was said to be compassionate in his dealings with the public, and equitable in his appointments to the force, regardless of race or ethnicity.[19] In his work with musicians, he appropriately acknowledged the many contributors to his publications, and though the majority of the contributors were men, he did include tunes he learned from the playing or singing of women.[20] A fine musician himself, O’Neill was generous in his admiration for his fellow players and was quick to compliment them. Of Patsy Touhey, the piper who performed in the Irish villages at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, O’Neill said, “Touhey proved to be another surprise, who has since developed into a wonder. In the opinion of his admirers, he has no equal.”[21]

The dedications O’Neill wrote in his inimitably stylish penmanship to the many recipients of his publications showed not only his generosity, but his investment in paying individual tributes to friends and acquaintances with whom he shared his collections. One such dedication reads, "To Julia A. Mooney, A Loving Daughter From An Affectionate Father, Capt. Francis O'Neill, Nov 20th, 1913." And a second, to a musical comrade and Chief of the Milwaukee Fire Department in the 1890s: "To the Amiable and Talented Capt. Michael J. Dunn, Cordial Greetings of the Editor & Publisher, Francis O'Neill, Nov 10th, '22." 

Francis and Anna O'Neill with their Daughters, Caroline, Ann, and May

The Final Years

Astutely availing himself of the financial opportunities Chicago offered, O’Neill invested well and earned a comfortable return. Having lived in Bridgeport in the early years of married life, Francis and Anna moved to Hyde Park where they remained for over 40 years, but they also enjoyed life on their farm in Palos, IL and a winter retreat in Ocean Springs, MS. In 1934, Anna O’Neill passed away, followed two years later by Francis who died at age 87 in their Hyde Park home.[22]

The Chief is remembered with admiration for his years on the Chicago Police Force and the impact his tenure had on the city, together with the musical legacy he left behind; a legacy that has made a key contribution to the canon of tunes, and particularly the dance music of the Irish tradition across the world.