1. Joseph Finegan, sometimes Finnegan, was an American businessman and brigadier general for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
19 Facts About Joseph Finegan
1. 2.
Joseph Finegan subsequently led the Florida Brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia until near the end of the war.
3.
Joseph Finegan returned to business after the war, and worked as a cotton broker.
4.
Joseph Finegan was born on 17 November 1814 at Clones, a small town in the west of County Monaghan in Ireland.
5.
Joseph Finegan came to Florida in the 1830s, first establishing a sawmill at Jacksonville and later a law practice at Fernandina.
6.
Joseph Finegan's successes are perhaps attributable to his first marriage on July 28,1842, to the widow Rebecca Smith Travers.
7.
At a courthouse auction in 1849, Joseph Finegan paid just twenty-five dollars for five miles of shoreline along Lake Monroe.
8.
Joseph Finegan's family included his three stepdaughters Maria, Margaret, and Martha Travers; and children Rutledge, Agnes, Josephine, and Yulee Finegan.
9.
At Florida's secession convention, Finegan represented Nassau County alongside James G Cooper.
10.
Also in 1862, recognizing the importance of Florida beef to the Confederate cause, Joseph Finegan gave cattle baron Jacob Summerlin permission to select thirty men from the state troops under his command to assist in rounding up herds to drive north.
11.
In 1863, Joseph Finegan complained of the large quantity of rum making its way from the West Indies into Florida.
12.
Joseph Finegan urged Governor John Milton to confiscate the "vile article" and destroy it before it could impact army and civilian morals.
13.
On February 20,1864, Joseph Finegan stopped a Federal advance from Jacksonville under General Truman Seymour that was intent upon capturing the state capitol at Tallahassee.
14.
Critics have faulted Joseph Finegan for failing to exploit his victory by pursuing his retreating enemy, contenting himself by salvaging their arms and ammunition from the battlefield.
15.
Some Finegan detractors believe he did little more to contribute to the Confederate victory at Olustee than to shuttle troops forward to General Alfred H Colquitt of Georgia, whom they credit for thwarting the Federal advance.
16.
Brigadier General Joseph Finegan returned to Fernandina after the war to discover his mansion had been seized by the Freedmen's Bureau for use as an orphanage and school for black children.
17.
Joseph Finegan had to sell most of his lands along Lake Monroe to Henry Sanford for $18,200 to pay his attorneys and other creditors.
18.
Joseph Finegan did retain a home site at Silver Lake.
19.
Joseph Finegan died October 29,1885, at Rutledge, his orange grove named after his late son in Orange County, Florida.