Patrick Robert Guiney

Patrick Robert Guiney (15 January 1835 in Parkstown, County Tipperary, Ireland – March 21, 1877 in Boston) was an American Civil War soldier.

Early life and career Patrick Robert Guiney was the second and eldest surviving son of James Roger Guiney, who was descended from Jacobites, and Judith Macrae. James Guiney, impoverished after a failed runaway marriage, brought with him on his second voyage to New Brunswick his favourite child Patrick, then not six years old. After some years, Mrs. Guiney and their younger son, William, rejoined her husband, recently crippled by a fall from his horse; they settled in Portland, Maine. The young Guiney worked as a wheel boy in a rope factory, and at the age of fourteen apprenticed to a machinist in Lawrence, Massachusetts, but stayed only a year and a half before returning to Portland.

He hoped to better himself through education, and attended the public grammar school. He matriculated at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. His depleting finances caused him to leave after about a year, despite the fact that the college president offered to make some arrangement for him to stay, which, according to Guiney's daughter, his honor would not allow him to accept. Guiney's book-loving father having meanwhile died, he went to study for the Bar under Judge Walton, and was admitted in Lewiston, Maine, in 1856, taking up the practice of criminal law.

In politics he was a Republican. For the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, he won its first suit. In 1859 he married in the old cathedral, Boston, Janet Margaret Doyle, related to James Warren Doyle, bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. They had one son, who died in infancy, and one daughter, the poet and essayist Louise Imogen Guiney. Home life in Roxbury and professional success were cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War. just before the mustering out of his old regiment.

On February 21, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Guiney for the award of the honorary grade of brevet brigadier general, to rank from March 13, 1865, for gallant and meritorious services during the war. The U.S. Senate confirmed the award on April 10, 1866.

Postbellum Kept alive for years by nursing, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress on a sort of "Christian Socialist" platform, was elected assistant district attorney (1866–70), and acted as consulting lawyer (not being longer able to plead) on many locally celebrated cases.

His last exertions were devoted to the defeat of the corruption and misuse of the Probate Court of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, of which he had become registrar (1869–77). He died suddenly and was found kneeling against an elm in the little park near his home. General Guiney was Commandant of the Loyal Legion, Major-General Commandant of the Veteran Military League, member of the Irish Charitable Society, and one of the founders and first members of the Catholic Union of Boston. He also published some literary criticism, a few graphic prose sketches and some verse.