Miami County
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Philip Conboy was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, in 1833. He came to the United States in 1851 and married Sarah McCarrol in New York in 1853. She was a native of county Armagh. The young couple started west to seek what ever good fortune might be in store for them. The young wife proved herself to be a woman of sterling character, "a truly great woman, she was a home maker, a good manager and withal a splendid mother."
They resided in Dixon, Illinois, for a time and then came to Westport, Missouri, when Kansas City was only a small place. Mr. Conboy took great interest in the public life of the new city which has since become the metropolis of the west. He served two terms on the Town Council and afterwards acted as tax collector. Later, when the Civil War broke out, he was chosen City marshall of Kansas City. He was respected and honored for his fearless championship of law and order and his stern attention to duty. He remained a member of the State Militia until the end of the war in 1865.
About this time Mr. Conboy formed a business partnership with John Larkin in the cattle trade. Their venture was successful. The firm of Conboy and Larkin drove herds of fat cattle from the finest pasture lands of Kansas. They were instrumental in making Kansas City a center for the cattle trade which led eventually to its great packing industry. A whole chapter might be written on the adventures of these two remarkable men.
Famous "Jack" Larkin, Philip Conboy and even their town of Auburey are now only sacred memories. In 1866 Mr. Conboy purchased the homestead in Johnson County where he resided until his death in 1905. His good wife, Sarah Conboy, lived until 1914, thus closing a chapter of human interest, the like of which can never come again.
Their remains rest in the Catholic Cemetery of Wea, and their children still maintain the fine old home and, what is more, they maintain the high standard of faith and character for which the old folks were noted.
It seems as if Kansas was destined to receive the bravest and the best of those whom fate had cast upon our shores during those eventful years of revolution, fever and famine in Europe, beginning in 1846. There is undoubtedly much good material for literature back of the names we now pass by so carelessly. "What is in a name?" you will say what interest can future generations find in men clad in homespun, or in women who never knew a note of music or read a line of Dante or saw a play of Shakespeare? Like the clods of the earth in which they delved, they surely can have not message for us of a brighter and better day.
Be not deceived; those men and women lived the tragedies and comedies that poets only dreamed of; they played upon a vaster stage than art could build and saw the sweep nature's fingers over the might organ which God had made on the day, "When the stars sang together" and the mountains answered back to the sea and all nature piped its melody from throat and cloud rippling stream along the pathway of a richer and fuller life than we can ever know.
These men and women passed through "purgatories" and "infernos" not imagined by the author of the Divina Commedia. Their lives are unwritten epic poems, replete with plots, contrasts and climaxes; with victories and failures, and plentifully varied with the joys and sorrows that lent to life its charm and its perfection. The theme ennobled the actors and made them heroic; the scenes were real, whereas art can only copy. God himself was its author and His Divine Son the teacher, and the best and bravest human hearts the world ever knew acted the play of life magnificently. If you want proof of all this, look around. The stage is right here, hallowed by the fame of the actors and the glory of their deeds.
Tom Conboy Family, From: The community of Aubry-Stilwell
The History of Our Cradle Land, by Thomas H. Kinsella
PART VII, WEA, MIAMI COUNTY
THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY ROSARY
NOTES ON THE FIRST CATHOLIC SETTLERS OF THE WEA PARISH.
Transcribed by Sean Furniss
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