William T. O'Higgins
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (April 2014) |
William T. O'Higgins (1829-1874) was a Catholic chaplain in the American Civil War. He served in the 10th Ohio Infantry.
Born William T. Higgins in 1829 near the border of counties Leitrim and Longford, Ireland,[1] he later took the last name of his uncle (Bishop William O'Higgins (1793-1853)), styled O'Higgins, after the royals.[1] After studying in Maynooth at the Royal College of St. Patrick's, he was sent to British Guiana in the West Indies.[1] He arrived in Philadelphia on May 23, 1857 and joined the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.[1] From 1860 to 1861, he was the assistant to Rev. Richard Gilmour at St. Patrick's in Cincinnati.[1]
After difficulties in Cincinnati, William wrote the Archbishop, John B. Purcell, requesting a position as chaplain; this "remov[ed him from a thorny personnel situation by responding to an obvious wartime need".[1]
He was commissioned as chaplain of the 10th Ohio Infantry on June 3, 1861, in which he served until June 17, 1864.[1]
Following the war, he returned to Cincinnati as a pastor and chaplain, but later left for the Diocese of Little Rock, Arkansas, where he served at the Cathedral of St. Andrew, with a colleague from Ohio, Bishop Edward Fitzgerald.[1] By 1871, he had returned to Ohio, this time to Cleveland, where he taught at St. Mary's Seminary for one term and subsequently served 6 months as pastor of St. Augustine's Church, Cleveland. In 1873 he returned to County Leitrim, Ireland, where he died November 4, 1874.[1]
References
[edit]- Carter, Ruth C., For Honor, Glory & Union: The Mexican & Civil War Letters of Brig. Gen. William Haines Lytle. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. ISBN 0-8131-2108-6.
- Grace, Kevin (29 October 2012). Irish Cincinnati. Arcadia Publishing. p. 32.
- Catholic Military and Naval Chaplains by Aidan Henry Germain (1929)
- David J. Endres "An Ohio 'Holy Joe': Chaplain William T. O'Higgins' Wartime Correspondence with Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati, 1863," Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal 13, no. 2 (2009): 73–78.