John Cunneen (May 18, 1848 near Ennis,

County Clare County Clare ( ga, Contae an Chláir) is a county in Ireland, in the Southern Region and the province of Munster, bordered on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Clare County Council is the local authority. The county had a population of 118,81 ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

– February 21, 1907 Buffalo,

Erie County, New York Erie County is a county along the shore of Lake Erie in western New York State. As of the 2020 census, the population was 954,236. The county seat is Buffalo, which makes up about 28% of the county's population. Both the county and Lake Erie w ...

, USA) was an American lawyer and politician.

Life

He came to the

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when 14 years old to live with relatives at Albion, New York. He graduated from Albion Academy in 1870, and began the study of law at the office of John H. White at Albion. He was admitted to the bar in 1874, and commenced practice in Albion. He was a member of the Board of Education of the Village of Albion, and for seven years was Clerk to the Board of Supervisors of Orleans County. On January 26, 1876, he married Elizabeth A. Bass. In 1890, he removed to Buffalo and formed a partnership with William F. Sheehan and Charles F. Tabor in the firm of Sheehan, Tabor, Cunneen & Coatsworth. In 1894, he became the senior member of Cunneen & Coatsworth. He was a delegate to the 1892 Democratic National Convention. At the New York state election, 1902, he was elected

New York Attorney General The attorney general of New York is the chief legal officer of the U.S. state of New York and head of the Department of Law of the state government. The office has been in existence in some form since 1626, under the Dutch colonial government o ...

on the Democratic and

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tickets. He ran for re-election at the New York state election, 1904, but was defeated. He died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...

, and was buried at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Albion, like his brother Cornelius Cunneen (1868–1890) who had drowned in the

Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing t ...

. His wife Elizabeth, who died in 1917, was Protestant and so could not be buried with him.

Sources

Obit in NYT on February 22, 1907
Bio
transcribed from ''Our County and Its People: A Descriptive Work on Erie County, New York'' edited by Truman C. White (The Boston History Company, 1898)

transcribed from ''The Medina Tribune'' on October 9, 1890

at

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cunneen, John 1848 births 1907 deaths Deaths from pneumonia in New York (state) New York State Attorneys General People from Ennis Politicians from Buffalo, New York Politicians from County Clare Irish emigrants to the United States (before 1923) New York (state) Democrats People from Albion, Orleans County, New York Lawyers from Buffalo, New York