San Francisco County
Biographies
CORNELIUS HENRY BROSNAHAN
CORNELIUS
HENRY BROSNAHAN, Councilman of the Sixth Ward of Oakland, and a member of the
firm of Brosnahan & Barry, proprietors of the San
Pablo Avenue Carriage Factory, was born in Tralee,
county Kerry, Ireland, July 21, 1856, a son of Cornelius Brosnahan
(a farmer) and his wife, by birth Catherine Prindiville.
He was but two weeks old when his parents left Ireland, and three months old
when they arrived in New York. They soon settled on a farm in Springfield,
Vermont, where he was brought up as a Green Mountain boy. In 1870 he moved with
his parents to Brattleboro, same State, where his father died in 1877, aged
seventy-three years; his mother died there in 1888, at the same age. Of their
nine children, four died in infancy. One daughter, Katie, by marriage Mrs.
James Fleming, died in Brattleboro in 1889, aged forty-one years. Four are
living, namely: Margaret, born in 1837, and residing in Oakland; Elizabeth, now
the wife of Martin Austin, a blacksmith of Brattleboro; Daniel W., of
Leadville, Colorado, a carpenter by trade.
Mr. Brosnahan, our subject, was reared on a farm. At the age of
fifteen years he began to learn the trade of carriage-painter, which he has
followed in one way or another ever since. In 1875 he commenced in business for
himself. In 1878 he came to this coast and first worked as a journeyman in
Oakland, then in Stockton, Santa Rosa, San Francisco
and finally Oakland again. In 1887, with John H. Barry, he formed the firm of Brosnahan & Barry, carriage painters. September 1,
1888, they enlarged their business so as to include all departments of carriage
manufacture, and have been prosperous. They now employ twelve skilled
mechanics.
Mr. Brosnahan has taken an interest in politics, as a Democrat,
all his life; was for a time Collector for the State Harbor Commissioners at
Washington street wharf in San Francisco, resigning when elected to the Council
in March, 1889, and taking his seat the first Monday in April. He favors public
improvements and every movement seeming conducive to the welfare of Oakland. He
has been a delegate to several State conventions of his party and a member of
its Executive Committee in Oakland. In the City Council he is a member of the
Committees on Judiciary, Removals and Obstructions, Printing, and on Education,
and Chairman of the Committee on Fire and Water.
Transcribed
by Elaine Sturdevant.
Source: "The
© 2006 Elaine Sturdevant.