William James MacNeven

The eldest of four sons, at the age of 12 he was sent by his uncle Baron MacNeven, to receive his education abroad, for the penal laws rendered education impossible for Catholics in Ireland. This Baron MacNeven was William O'Kelly MacNeven, an Irish exile physician, who for his medical skill in her service had been created an Austrian noble by the Empress Maria Theresa. Young MacNeven made his collegiate studies at Prague. His medical studies were made at Vienna where he was a pupil of Pestel and took his degree in 1784. The same year he returned to Dublin to practise.[1]

He became a member of the Catholic Committee, and in December 1792 he was returned from Navan as a delegate to the Catholic Convention held in the Tailor's Hall, Back Lane. In this "Back Lane Parliament" he joined Committee chairman, John Keogh, and secretary, Wolfe Tone, in pressing for full and immediate Catholic Emancipation.[1]

At the same time he joined the United Irishmen at the solicitation of Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald. He took the society's test or oath to advance, in the cause of a national and representative government for Ireland, a union of Catholic and Protestant, from Fitzgerald's friend and protector, Mary Moore. With Oliver Bond, Richard McCormick (McCormack) and Bernard MacSheehy (Tone's aide-de-camp), he conspired to solicit French assistance for a republican insurrection.[2][1]

After returning from Pais, where he had conferred with Tone, in March 1798 MacNevan was arrested in March 1798 and confined in Kilmainham Jail. After the suppression of the rebellion in the summer of 1798, he was held with other senior United Irish leaders as a state prisoner in Fort George, Scotland. On condition of exile he was released in 1802. The following year he was in Paris seconding the efforts of Robert Emmet to persuade Napoleon Bonaparte to commit troops to Ireland. In anticipation, MacNevan joined Irish Legion as a captain. But following the failure of Emmet's rising in Dublin in July 1803 and despairing of the intentions of the now Emperor Napoleon, he decided, as did others in the Legion, to leave for the United States.[1]

MacNeven arrived in New York on 4 July 1805.[3]

In 1807, he delivered a course of lectures on clinical medicine in the recently established College of Physicians and Surgeons. Here in 1808, he received the appointment of professor of midwifery. In 1810, at the reorganization of the school, he became the professor of chemistry, and in 1816 was appointed in addition to the chair of materia medica. In 1823, MacNeven was elected to the American Philosophical Society.[4] In 1826 with six of his colleagues, he resigned his professorship because of a misunderstanding with the New York Board of Regents, and accepted the chair of materia medica in Rutgers Medical College, a branch of the New Jersey institution of that name, established in New York as a rival to the College of Physicians and Surgeons. The school at once became popular because of its faculty, but after four years was closed by legislative enactment on account of interstate difficulties. The attempt to create a school independent of the regents resulted in a reorganization of the University of the State of New York.[3]

MacNeven is affectionately known as "The Father of American Chemistry". He is buried on the Riker Farm in the Astoria section of Queens, New York. He has an obelisk monument commemorated for him in the Trinity Church, located between Wall Street and Broadway, New York. The Obelisk is opposite to another commemorated for his friend and fellow exile, Robert Emmet's eleder brother, Thomas Addis Emmet.[5]

MacNeven married, on 15 June 1810, Mrs. Jane Margaret (née Riker) Tom (1782–1868), widow of John Tom, merchant, of New York, and daughter of U.S. Representative Samuel Riker of New Town, Long Island, by whom he had several children.[6]

MacNeven's best known contribution to science is his "Exposition of the Atomic Theory" (New York, 1820), which was reprinted in the French Annales de Chimie. In 1821 he published with emendations an edition of Brande's "Chemistry" (New York, 1829). Some of his purely literary works, his "Rambles through Switzerland" (Dublin, 1803), his "Pieces of Irish History" (New York, 1807), and his numerous political tracts attracted wide attention. He was co-editor for many years of the "New York Medical and Philosophical Journal".

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Dunlop, Robert (1893). "MacNeven, William James". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 35. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Walsh, James Joseph (1913). "William James MacNeven". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.:
• Francis, Life of MacNeven in Gross, Lives of Eminent American Physicians (Philadelphia, 1861);
• Gilman in New York Medical Gazette (1841), 65;
• Byrne, Memoirs of Miles Byrne (Paris, 1863);
• Madden, Lives of the United Irishmen, series ii, vol. II (London, 1842–46);
• Fitzpatrick, Secret Service under Pitt (London, 1892–93)

• Media related to William James MacNeven at Wikimedia Commons
• Ingham, George R. (2015). Irish Rebel, American Patriot: William James Macneven, 1763-1841. Seattle, WA: Amazon Books.