General Notes

BIOGRAPHY: Parents died in the Great Potato Famine about 1848 and Michael left Ireland for the US shortly thereafter.  He left a brother and sister with family in England, and made his first home in America with an aunt and uncle in New Haven, CT.  He later worked for the railroad through Illinois and finally beganfarming in Jackson Twp, Will Co, IL.

BIOGRAPHY: From The Manhattan Messenger, Manhattan, Will Co, IL, Thurs 20 Jul 1911, Vol 3, No 13:
"Michael Doyle hasbought the 80 acre farm of Otto Gurney, recently advertised in the Messenger [at age 79].  The price paid was $16,000 or $200 per acre.
"This farm makes a total of 830 acres that Mr Doyle has bought since he left the Emerald Isle in 1849...
"His inventory on his arrival in the land of opportunity showed his entire working capital to be six pence - about twelve cents.  His parents having died when Michael was 16, he went, upon his arrival to this country, to make his home with an uncle and aunt in Connecticut. The wide-awake lad, however, was not long in learning that his relatives were as poor as himself, and disdaining to add to their burden, he left them, determined to make his own way.
"The first job was carrying the hod [1. A trough carried over the shoulder for transporting loads, such as bricks. 2. A coal scuttle.] at $1.25 a day.  The foreman told him and the mortarman that if they slaked a barrel of lime in the moring before working hours and another after the day's work was done they would earn 50 cents a day extra.  And so young Mike pumped the water and his partner stirred the lime and wages went up to $9 a week.  Mike took all his money to his boarding-house keeper, who acted as Mike's banker.  One day he told Mike that he had enough money to send for his brother and sister, who, since the death of their parents, had lived with relatives in Manchester, England.  'But I won't have enough money,' said Mike, 'after you take what I owe you for board.' 'Board?  Never mind the board until you send for your brother and sister.' [Have not been able to find out anything about these siblings, not even if he ever did send for them.  There are no extra individuals listed in Michael's household in any of the census years.]
"It was while cutting wood for the railroad that the land passion possessed him.  At that time good Iowa land was selling - when a purchaser could be found - for $1.25 per acre, and Mike thought if he only had 40 acresof that land bought and paid for he would ask no further favors of fortune...'But,' as Mike says...'where was the dollar and a quarter?'
"Michael Doyle...was industrious and thrifty and never lost his laudable ambition to have a piece of land for his very own.
"And the time came when he bought the 80 acres now worked by his son Joe, paying $15 per acre, or $4200 cash.  After fencing the land and building a house on it, he still had some money left. [This would have been in Jackson Twp, Will Co, IL.]
"Then some more land was purchased, until atthe time of his second marriage he had 340 acres...His advisors did not know that Mike was buying the land for [his] boys, so they would have a better start in life than he had, but the boys knew it and they staid [sic] with him. Each was given a farm and horses when they broke the home ties to make homes of theirown."

BIOGRAPHY: 1860 census Greenfield, Grundy Co, IL - railroad hand, real property worth $100, personal property worth $40 - could not read nor write.

BIOGRAPHY: 1870 census Jackson, Will Co, IL - farmer, real property worth $12,000, personal property worth $1825 - US citizen - cannot write.

BIOGRAPHY: 1880 census Jackson, Will Co, IL - farmer - cannot write.

BIOGRAPHY: 1900 census Jackson, Will Co, IL - farmer, own farm free, cannot read nor write, emigrated in 1849, naturalized about 1884.

BIOGRAPHY: 1910 census Manhattan, Will Co, IL - occupation listed as "diverse income" - emigrated to the US in 1849.

DEATH: Poor copy of obituary, paper and date