WIRockBios - McGavock, Hugh
Rock County, Wisconsin
Biographies
"Hugh McGavock"
HUGH McGAVOCK, now retired from active business life, and residing at
No. 805 Ninth street,
Beloit, Rock County, has been a potent factor in the development of that
city. He has always been an active and progressive man, bound to push
things, full of enterprise and laudable ambition. His career is an
instructive one, showing as it does what a brave spirit can accomplish
without adventitious aid, if the man will only persevere and be strong
in himself.
Mr. McGAVOCK was born in County Antrim, Ireland, Jan. 26, 1828, a son
of Alexander and
Sarah (DEVLIN) McGAVOCK, both natives of Ireland. They were the parents
of four sons and two daughters, and emigrated to the United States in
1847, settling at Fox Lake, Ill., where the senior McGAVOCK bought an
eighty-acre farm, partially improved, and 120 acres of government land
wholly unimproved. There he spent the remained of his life, but died in
Beloit, where on a visit to that city in 1861, having reached the age of
seventy years. His wife died about 1854. Both were loyal Catholics. His
father, Patrick McGAVOCK, was a farmer, and died in Ireland when
eighty-five. He had a family of four sons and two daughters. The father
of Mrs. Alexander McGAVOCK, Patrick DEVLIN, died in Ireland, when about
eighty years old. He was a farmer, and reared a family of four daughters
and three sons.
Hugh McGAVOCK received his schooling in Ireland and was a young man of
nineteen years of
age when he accompanied his parents to this country. He soon went into
business for himself, and began contracting on the construction of the
old Galena railroad, now a part of the Northwestern system. This work
proved profitable, and he followed it for twenty years or more on a
large scale. In 1852 Mr. McGAVOCK came to Beloit and bought a farm of
444 acres in the township of Beloit, which is still in his possession.
He has taken much interest in the development of farm property in
southern Wisconsin, investing his money freely in it, and at one time
owned as many as 800 acres. He has sold much of it, but still has
extensive real-estate interests in and around Beloit, particularly a
forty-acre tract that is laid off in town lots. In the city he owns two
houses which he rents and for the past nine years he has occupied his
present home on Ninth street, built by him and designed to b!
e his home as long as he shall live.
Hugh McGAVOCK and Miss Catharine BUCKLEY were married in Janesville,
Wis., Feb. 1, 1857. Mrs. McGAVOCK is a daughter of John and Margaret
(FITZGERALD) BUCKLEY, of Janesville, and has become the mother of nine
sons and two daughters: (1) Alexander, the first born, is a grocer and
market man at 3108 State street, Chicago; he married (first) Velmy
SMITH, who bore him six children, but one of whom, John Francis, is yet
living. She died in 1886, and Alexander then wedded Kate EAGAN, by whom
he had one son, Stephen. (2) John is a grocer in Beloit, and is
unmarried. (3) Hugh, Jr., is a coal, wood and lumber dealer in Beloit;
he married Catharine FINDLEY, and is the father of five children,
Thomas, Genevieve, Lilah, Marion and Hugh. (4) William (1), born May 5,
1862, died Nov. 1, 1863 (5) William (2), a farmer and stone quarryman at
Beloit, married Mame CANTWELL, and has three children, Kittie, Mildred
and the baby. (6) Patrick runs a grocery and meat market at 917 West 63d
stre
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