San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JUDGE DENIS MARTIN DENEHY
A retired merchant whose years of
industrious, successful activity and long record of fair-and-square dealing
have won for him the esteem and confidence of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances
is Judge D. M. Denehy, ex-postmaster of Acampo, in which town he has been the
central figure since early days. Born
near the Lakes of Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland, on November 11, 1851, he
was the son of Dennis Denehy, an Irish pedagogue teaching in the national
schools of that country. He had married
Miss Mary Murphy, and they had three children when they came out to the United
States and settled in Fairfield County, Ohio.
Our subject was then six years old, and he went through the nine grades
of the district school.
Striking out for himself as a young
man, he went to Iowa, and having learned the trade of a blacksmith in the
Buckeye State, he followed his trade there.
In 1874 he came to California, working at his trade for different contractors
at railroad and levee construction in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys,
and visiting the Acampo district while thus engaged. In the month of January, 1876, he opened up a
blacksmith shop at Lodi. He remained
only a few months, however, until May 1, of the same year, when he came up to
Acampo. Here he built his blacksmith
shop, which he operated until 1890, when he went back to Lancaster, Ohio. There he engaged in the natural gas and real
estate business until 1892, when he returned to Acampo, California, and for two
years resumed his work at the forge. In
1894 he engaged in the general merchandise business at Acampo, and for twenty
years successfully conducted a general merchandise store there. He has bought lands at Acampo and in the vicinity
from time to time, until he has become a substantial property owner.
In 1894, Mr. Denehy was appointed
special agent for the General Land Office, and later he became postmaster of
Acampo. Since 1902, also, he has been
serving as judge in the Justice’s Court, and this responsible office he still
holds, although in 1914 he sold his store at Acampo and retired from active
business life. He has always been a
consistent Democrat.
Judge Denehy was married at Acampo
on November 27, 1877, to Miss Lilly Mullen, a native of Placerville and the
daughter of Dennis and Bridget Mullen, who came to California in the sixties
and settled in the mining section of Placer County. Four children have blessed their union. The oldest was Sylvan,
he died at the age of nineteen, unmarried; Annette C. is now the wife of C. W.
Howard, vineyardist, of Acampo, and has one child, Naomi Jane, eight years old;
Robert E. married Miss Christine Wesner. He served the Southern Pacific Railway
Company for nineteen years, nine years as day operator at the Southern Pacific
downtown office in Stockton, until he succumbed to the influenza in 1918. He left one child, James Eugene, now twelve
years old. Mildred is the wife of Leo
Cooper, of Santa Barbara, California.
The death of Mrs. Denehy occurred on
November 23, 1920, just a year to a day, before that of her brother. Since her death, Judge Denehy has been making
his home with his daughter, Mrs. C. W. Howard.
The Judge was long a member of the Odd Fellows Lodge at Woodbridge. He is patriotic and popular as a justice of
the peace, and finds that administration of that office easier, with public
sentiment in his favor.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
831-832. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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