From Cootehill to Steubenville: The McFadden Family
In his latest Times Past column, Jonathan Smyth looks at the McFadden family who emigrated from Cootehill to America and became involved in the world of business and newspaper publication.
In the 1820s Cootehill was still one of the most prosperous linen towns in the country. Pigot’s directory for 1824 noted that, the ‘staple trade’ in the locality is ‘the manufacture of linen sheeting’, which it said was ‘deservedly held in great estimation throughout Ireland’; while the weekly market held on Fridays was ‘plentifully supplied with provisions of all kinds’ that arrived from the surrounding farms, which were ‘well cultivated’.
In 1820, Cootehill natives, Samuel and Lydia McFadden (née Stafford) and their family chose to emigrate to America. At first, the McFaddens settled in the city of Philadelphia where they lived for 11 years.
In 1813, Samuel and Lydia McFadden’s son, Henry Stafford McFadden, had been born in Cootehill and his paternal grandparents were George and Isabella McIntosh McFadden of the same town, and his grandparents on his mother’s side were Henry and Sarah Stafford.
There were McFadden families still living in Cootehill after Samuel and Lydia left in 1820 who had a hardware and ironmongery business on Bridge Street and a public house on Market Street; but without conducting further research we cannot be sure that they are related to the same McFadden family.
Upper Ohio
In 1831 when Henry S. McFadden was 17 years old, he moved to Cadiz, Harrison County, Ohio, where his father Samuel established the family trade, described as a general dry goods store that grew into the ‘largest concern’ of its type in the whole of Eastern Ohio. The ‘History of the Upper Ohio Valley’ pointed out that McFadden’s store was for years ‘the heaviest wool buying and pork packaging establishments in the county’. When the business started, Samuel left Henry S. in charge until 1832 so that he could return to Philadelphia ‘to bring out his remaining family in 1832’.
Henry met and fell in love with Miss Frances Isabelle Poore, from York County, a daughter of Charles M. Poore and Elizabeth Karg Poore. Known as Isabelle, she was living in McConnellsville, Ohio, at the time of her marriage to Henry S. McFadden on December 6, 1842, her family having moved there following her father’s demise.
The company lasted for a 50-year period. When his father died in 1861, Henry S. continued until 1875 when he decided it was time to retire and afterwards his son and partner H.H. (Henry Hunter) McFadden moved to Steubenville. McFadden’s Cadiz-based mercantile company was left in the hands of his business partners Messrs Kinsey and Mansfield.
Henry S. was said to be a man of ‘remarkable intelligence and wide reading’ and, although of a simple education, he made the name McFadden a ‘trustworthy and respected name in Ohio’ and ‘gave his backing’ to the Ohio State Bank of which he became a director of the Harrison County branch and vice-president. It was said that his business abilities ‘were unquestioned, his integrity was unspotted, and as a Christian gentleman’, he led a ‘blameless life’.
The McFaddens were famed for their longevity and Henry Stafford McFadden’s grandmother Isabella MacIntosh McFadden in Cootehill lived to the ripe old age of 96 years.
The siblings of Henry S. were Sarah McFadden; Mrs sabella Sharpe, wife of W.K. Sharpe of Steubenville; Mrs Letitia McFadden Hunter, wife of Joseph R. Hunter of Cadiz; Mrs Margaret Craig, wife of Samuel Craig of Cambridge, Ohio; Mrs Jane Anne McFadden Johnson, of Marion; and a brother, George McFadden.
Henry Stafford McFadden died on July 4, 1888, following an illness. He was survived by his widow and seven children, they were Miss Lizzie T.; Henry Hunter McFadden of the Steubenville Gazette; Fannie McFadden, married to Major J.J. Hanna, ‘an attorney of Kansas City’; John F. McFadden, an attorney at law in Columbus; Isabelle McFadden, wife of Charles W. Kinsey, of Oakland, California; and George McFadden, merchant of Fresno Flats, California.
Henry S. and Isabelle McFadden’s son, Henry Hunter McFadden, born in Cadiz on August 13, 1848, would one day become the editor and publisher of the Steubenville Gazette. His early schooling was rudimentary and afterwards he took a commercial course in the Quaker City College, Pennsylvania. At 16 years, he got work as a clerk in his father’s store and two years later became his business partner.
During his younger days, Henry H. proved a significant help to his father, and it was said, he helped him out in the running of the family’s ‘large store’, which as one publication noted ‘was conducted with such integrity and fair dealing’ that allowed them ‘gain a most enviable reputation’.
As time went on, Henry H. wanted to maximise his options and with determination and grit he left the family business in 1875 and settled in Steubenville where he entered the newspaper game. He teamed up with his cousin W.H. McFadden and became a partner of the company of McFadden and Hunter, as joint-editor and publisher, of the Steubenville Daily and Weekly Gazette. Another brother, Samuel Fleming McFadden, worked for a time with the newspaper before returning to Cadiz in 1886 when he resumed the family link to the grocery trade.
The McFaddens were of Scotch-Irish descent and Henry H. was straight spoken to the core and forthright in nature, while many of his editorials had a forceful tone that attracted wide interest across the United States. He built up the newspaper’s reputation, and the book, ‘Pioneer Days of America’, further expanded on Henry H.’s personality, telling us that, ‘like his Scotch-Irish ancestors, he was absolutely fearless and standing for the principles or other matters which he felt were wrong… while politically, the Steubenville Gazette was the only Democratic newspaper in Steubenville.’ Politically, Henry H. was a ferocious Democrat following in the Jeffersonian mould.
On January 13, 1872, Henry H. and Sarah Craig of Washington, Guernsey County, were married but sadly she died that same year on September 7. Then on February 16, 1876, he married his second wife Emma Annette Beall from Cadiz. They had two boys Charles Paul McFadden and Henry Earle McFadden.
In 2025, Cootehill celebrates its 300th anniversary as a market town, established by a charter granted to Thomas Coote in 1725. It would seem fitting to remember Cootehill’s far-flung emigrants during that much anticipated year of celebration.
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