The O'Shea Family's History in Springfield

The O'Shea family's local roots go back to at least 1860, the year Abraham Lincoln was elected president and moved his office to what is now the Old State Capitol to accommodate the droves of people wanting to see him. Were the O’Sheas among them? We don’t know, but it’s certainly possible they saw Lincoln in town and took part in Springfield’s raucous celebration on November 6, 1860 -- the night he was elected.

We know that James and Johanna O’Shea, parents of O’Shea Builders founder John Timothy O’Shea, lived here by 1860, although they may have moved here earlier. They had immigrated to America in 1852 from Ireland and, according to family lore, eventually came to the state’s capital so James could help build the current Illinois Statehouse (construction began in 1868).

The O’Sheas were part of a population boom that started after Springfield was named the state capital in 1837. By the 1850s, it was a large port for farmers who shipped their commodities from its central location. Perhaps this appealed to James, who also worked as a farmer in Springfield.  

The O’Sheas joined the Reisches, Donelans, Grahams, and other families here as part of an influx of immigrants during the middle 1800s. The largest groups were the Irish and German. Many of the Irish were fleeing “oppressive British control, famine, and disease”, according to the book “Springfield Home and Family: A Pictorial History.”

When they arrived, Springfield was evolving from a country town to a small city, although visitors still complained about its appearance. Hogs roamed freely on the frequently mud-filled streets where the smells of slaughter houses’ trash sickened citizens. The porkers “continued to root up sidewalks, wallow in the mud, and bedaub fences and houses with slime,” writes Paul Angle in Here I Have Lived: A History of Lincoln’s Springfield.

O’Shea’s founder, John, was born the year after construction began on the Statehouse. Even though he was young, John watched the construction (it continued off and on for 20 years) with interest. “He talked about how the workers built a dirt ramp on what’s now First Street,” says David L. “Bud” O’Shea, John’s grandson and O’Shea’s chief executive officer. “The ramp started at the building and went a block or two north on First Street, as far as it needed to go, and the horses would drag material up on the ramp to workers because they didn’t have cranes to hoist materials then.”

We can’t be sure when John started working as a builder. Family lore says his mother’s brother, Timothy O’Brien -- a general contractor, built the first St. Agnes Church in Springfield and taught John carpentry.  John first called himself a carpenter in the 1889 city directory, when he was 20.

In 1900, John gave himself a promotion. Instead of calling himself a carpenter in the directory, he listed himself as a “contractor.” With that, the O’Shea firm was born.