IRISH AMERICA MAGAZINE, March/April 1995, "The Irish of Dubuque, Iowa", by Lyn Jerde, page 73. Irishman victim of first Iowa execution An Irish-born was the first European convicted and executed for murder in what is now Iowa--despite his protest that Dubuque had no laws under which he could be tried. The story of Patrick O'Connor is one of frontier justice, Dubuque's early Irish community and a very, very troubled man. An eyewitness account of O'Connor's life and death was published in a 1920 issue of PALIMPSEST, a historical journal of Iowa. O'Connor, born in County Cork in 1797, was hanged in the summer of 1834 for shooting his mining partner, George O'Keaf. In 1828, O'Connor, then of Galena, Illinois., broke his leg, and the limb had to be amputated. He was given a wooden leg and all the charity the people of Galena could muster--until his foul temperament caused people to grow tired of him. O'Connor came to Dubuque in 1833, where he entered a mining partnership with O'Keaf. The two shared a cabin just outside Dubuque. On May 19, 1834, O'Keaf came back to the cabin with a friend, and O'Connor wouldn't open the door. When O'Keaf forced the door open, O'Connor shot him with a musket. Eliphalet Price, an eyewitness to O'Connor's execution, said O'Connor replied, "That is my business," when miners asked him why he killed O'Keaf. Some wanted to hang him right then and there. Instead, a trial was held the next day under a spreading elm tree--despite O'Connor's protests that "ye have no laws in the country, and ye cannot try me." Iowa was then 12 years away from statehood, and was not then part of any organized territory--so there was no legal system. But a trial was held anyway, with O'Connor choosing his own jury. After hearing from three or four witnesses, the jury deliberated for about an hour before finding O'Connor guilty and sentencing him to die on the gallows at 1 p.m. on June 20. An Irish priest, the Rev. Charles Fitzmaurice, of Galena, denounced the trial as unjust and illegal. But Dubuque's Irish community didn't intervene on O'Connor's behalf. And a false rumor that 200 Irishmen were coming from Mineral Point, Wisconsin to free O'Connor only served to expedite his execution. On June 20, about 160 men formed a rifle company to march to the death site, with a fife and muffled drum. Shops closed. The village bell tolled. Fitzmaurice and O'Connor said he was sorry he killed O'Keaf, and asked the assembly's forgiveness. When O'Connor tried to tell the crowd whom he wanted to inherit his possessions, Fitzmaurice said," Do not mind your worldly affairs; in a few minutes you will be launched into eternity. Give your thoughts to God." O'Connor was buried, with his wooden leg, in a grave that had been dug at the foot of the gallows. "Immediately after this," Price wrote, "many of the reckless and abandoned outlaws, who had congregated at the Dubuque mines, began to leave for sunnier climes...The people began to feel more secure in their enjoyment of life and property." Price later became a politician, and a member of the Board of Curators of the State Historical Society of Iowa. This story is a edited version of a feature "The Greening of the Tri-States" by Lyn Jerde, which appeared in the Dubuque TELEGRAPH HERALD on March 13, 1994.