Biographical note

The first of the O’Connell family of Massachusetts to immigrate from Ireland were James O’Connell (1845-1924) and Elizabeth O’Connell (1841-1921) who met shortly after arriving in the United States, possibly introduced by Elizabeth’s brother, Jeremiah O’Connell (?-1916), and married in January 1872. James and Elizabeth had seven children: Joseph F. O’Connell (1872-1942), Mary O’Connell Kelly (1875-1964), John O’Connell (1876-1941), James O’Connell (1877-1957), Daniel T. “Don” O’Connell (1878-1964), Frederick O’Connell (1880-1907), and Elizabeth M. “Bessy” O’Connell (1884-1968). James was a plasterer, and may have served in the Union Navy during the American Civil War. Elizabeth was a seamstress, and also invested in real estate.

The eldest child, Joseph, married Marisita Lenahan (1888-1963) in 1910. Marisita was the daughter of United States Congressman John T. Lenahan IV and Mary Donovan Lenahan, of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Joseph O’Connell attended Boston College and Harvard Law School and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1907 to 1911. He worked as an attorney alongside two of his brothers, Don and James, covering a wide variety of cases, including those involving Chinese immigrants, interpersonal disputes, murder, and a German saboteur in Maine. He died suddenly in 1942, days after his 70th birthday.

Joseph and Marisita had twelve children, eleven of whom lived into adulthood: Joseph F. O’Connell, Jr. (1912-1966), John T. Lenahan O’Connell (1913-2014), Frederick P. O’Connell (1914-1990), Finbarr O’Connell (1916-?), Marisita O’Connell (1917-1959), Brendan O’Connell (1919-1953), Kevin O’Connell (1920-?), Meta O’Connell (1923-1967), Conleth O’Connell (1924-1994), Laelia O’Connell (1925-2007), Diarmuid O’Connell (1928-2015), and Declan O’Connell (1929-1929).

John Thomas Lenahan O'Connell, known to family and friends as "Lenahan," graduated from Boston College in 1934, Boston University Law School in 1938 and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1938. He was employed in his father's law firm in Boston, the Law Offices of Joseph F. O'Connell. He enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private in 1936 and graduated from the Massachusetts Military Academy the same year with a promotion to second lieutenant, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1965. Lenahan served during World War II in camps around the United States and in Dutch New Guinea (from July 1944) and in the National Guard and Reserves until his retirement. On September 7, 1942, he married Priscilla Halloran. They had three children: Lenahan Louis O’Connell, Donn O’Connell, and Brendan H. O’Connell. With the assistance of Dennis P. Ryan and James W. Ryan, Lenahan wrote a history of the O’Connell family of Massachusetts and the Lenahan family of Pennsylvania, titled Able, Active and Aggressive: the O’Connell family of Massachusetts. Lenahan died on January 5, 2014, at over 100 years old.

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