O'Reilly, Henry, 1806-1886

Journalist and inventor.

Editor and telegraph pioneer. Born in Ireland; came to the United States with his family in 1816. Editor of the Rochester (N.Y.) Daily Advertiser, 1826; involved with S. F. B. Morse and Amos Kendall in construction of telegraph lines from eastern Pennsylvania to St. Louis in the 1840s. In later life, he spelled his name "O'Rielly" instead of O'Reilly.

Editor, author, pioneer in the erection of telegraph lines. O'Reilly changed the spelling of his name to O'Rielly, and that form is on his tombstone, but the name appears more commonly as O'Reilly.

Henry O'Reilly was born in Carrickmacross, Province of Ulster, Ireland on Feb. 6, 1806 to a merchant and the daughter of a physician. In 1816, the family emigrated to New York. After working as an apprentice in the printing trade including several years as an assistant editor of the New York Patriot, in 1826 O'Reilly was appointed editor of the Rochester, NY, Daily Advertiser. Within a year, O'Reilly gained notice in the anti-Masonic uproar that followed the kidnapping and murder of William Morgan. In 1832, he was appointed Deputy Collector and Inspector for the District of Genesee, NY. He published numerous circulars and pamphlets on current events and issues, and in 1838 Sketches of Rochester, with Incidental Notices of Western New York. In that same year, O'Reilly was appointed Post Master of Rochester. From the 1830s through the 1850s, he was heavily involved in civic and political organizations, serving as the President of the Rochester Athenaeum and Young Men's Association, Recording Secretary of the New York State Agricultural Society, and Chairman of the Clinton League.

O'Reilly's commercial activities were similarly energetic and varied. In 1833, he threw his support behind improvements to the Erie Canal. In 1845, he contracted with Samuel F.B. Morse and Amos Kendall in the planned construction of telegraph wires from eastern Pennsylvania to the Great Lakes. Legal difficulties ended his involvement with the enterprise, despite his erection of over 8,000 miles of wire. In 1851, O'Reilly established the Irish and American Steamship Company; in 1854, he organized the Demoine Navigation and Railroad Company.

O'Reilly was married to Marcia Brooks, daughter of General Micah Brooks; they had one son, Henry Brooks O'Reilly, who was killed in the Battle of Williamsburg, 1862. Late in his life, O'Reilly changed the spelling of his surname to O'Rielly; additional papers of O'Reilly may be found under this variant.