William James MacNeven was born on March 21, 1763 at Ballynahown, near Aughrim, County Galway, Ireland. Restrictions on professional education for Catholics led MacNeven to leave Ireland at age ten to study with his uncle, Baron William O’Kelly MacNeven, physician to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. MacNeven received his medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1783. Returning to Dublin to practice medicine, MacNeven joined the United Irishmen and the campaign for Catholic emancipation. When the Irish rebellion of 1798 failed, MacNeven was arrested, then exiled in 1802. After two years as a captain in the Irish Legion of the French Army, MacNeven left France for the United States, arriving in New York in 1805. In New York MacNeven resumed his medical practice. He received an honorary MD from Columbia College in 1806 and was appointed professor of obstetrics in the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1808. After the college was reorganized in 1810, he became professor of chemistry, also teaching materia medica between 1816 and 1820. MacNeven is reported to be the first chemistry professor in the United States to set up a lab where students could conduct experiments. In 1826 MacNeven moved to the newly established Duane Street medical school where he lectured until the school was closed in 1830. MacNeven continued to practice medicine until his retirement in 1839.

In 1810 MacNeven married Jane Margaret Riker Tom, daughter of Samuel Riker of Long Island. Their children were Jane Mary, Rosa Patience, James Joseph, Samuel Riker, William Hugh, and Jane’s daughter from her first marriage, Anna Riker Tom.

MacNeven, along with exiled Society of United Irishmen members Emmet and William Sampson, was a central figure in New York’s Irish American community. MacNeven was a founder or member of numerous societies formed in New York for the benefit and relief of Irish immigrants, including the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the Hibernian Provident Society, the Shamrock Friendly Society, and the New York Society for the Relief of Emigrant Irishmen. A monument to MacNeven honoring his contributions as the "Father of American Chemistry" exists in Trinity churchyard on Broadway in New York City, with inscriptions in English, Gaelic, and Latin.

William James MacNeven died in 1841 after a long illness at the home of his step-daughter Anna and son-in-law Thomas A. Emmet, Jr., the son of MacNeven’s fellow Irish exile, Thomas Addis Emmet.

Sources:

Madden, R.R. The United Irishmen: their lives and times, 2nd Ed., 3rd ser., (1860), 197-256.

Stookey, Byron. “William James MacNeven, (1763-1841), Versatile Professor in New York’s College of Physicians and Surgeons”. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 41, (Oct. 1965), 1037-51.

Wilson, David A. “MacNeven, William James (1763-1841)”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept. 2004; online ed., Oct. 2007.