The O'Neill story

In that very Irish of emigré beginnings, Hugh O’Neill’s eldest brother inherited the family farm. A born adventurer recently returned from South Africa, he declined his father’s suggestion he become a chemist and instead set out from Achinduff, Co. Tyrone for Canada in the early 1900’s to seek his fortune elsewhere. It was only the first of many journeys that would take him all across North America.
He left Canada for Detroit in 1908, where he worked at the Ford factory during the debut of the Model T that revolutionized the auto industry. Restless still, he moved on once more to Chicago, where a few years later he married his love Florence Koretke. Their son, Francis Henry O’Neill— named for the brother who got the farm, sure no hard feelings— was born shortly thereafter.
By now a train engineer, Hugh and his family continued to criss-cross America, spending time on both the Florida coast and a ranch in Arizona before finally settling in Los Angeles, where at last he got a farm of his own: they purchased a walnut farm in the San Fernando Valley, whose fruits Francis harvested and sold to pay his school fees. It was a good investment— after graduating UCLA with honors, he surpassed himself by graduating Summa Cum Laude from USC Gould School of Law, with an Order of the Coif in hand.
Francis also served during World War II, where he fought in Germany and participated in the liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp. On his way home, he decided to detour through Ireland and pop by the old family homestead in County Tyrone. He didn’t even have to introduce himself: family history has it that he looked so much like his uncle Francis that when he came to the gate, his cousin knew him before he spoke a word.
Francis returned to Los Angeles after the war and married Kathryn O’Rourke. Together they had six children, the first boy named Hugh for his father and the first girl named Margaret for his grandmother. Hugh lived to meet his first grandchildren, and Francis lived to meet several of his. In 2025, Francis’ youngest daughter Mary received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish abroad, presented by Michael D. Higgins and celebrated by the family in both the States and Ireland. Although the family remains based in the states, mostly up and down the California coast, we have formed close relationships with our cousins (and second cousins, and third, and third-once-removed) in Ireland, and visits are frequent. In a certain full circle, Hugh’s granddaughters even bought a small home together, not a farm in Achinduff but a place in Dublin by the docks, where O’Neills of all the branches regularly return.