James Murray Flynn

Born at Downeyville, Emily Township, in what is now Ontario, in August 1846, and baptized there in September 1847, son of John Flynn and Anne Murray (record); at Emily in the 1851 census, aged 4 at his next birthday (record), and in 1861, aged 13 (record). On 16 October 1865, aged 18, he enlisted in the U.S. Army at St. Louis (record); he later drew an Indian Wars pension, the pension for the Army’s frontier campaigns, marked “Army invalid.” He married Annie Owens in Otoe County, Nebraska, in 1870 and in 1880 was farming at Fairfield, Clay County, with his widowed mother-in-law Leah Owens in the household (record).

In February 1911, when Justice of the Peace Daniel Shea resigned through ill health, the county court at his request appointed “James M. Flynn, formerly engineer at Central police station and an old Indian scout,” to take his place: “Flynn is another one of the old timers who has led an adventurous life. He was defeated in the Democratic primaries for the office by a narrow margin” (record).

By about 1915 he was “Justice James M. Flynn” of St. Joseph, Missouri, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for police judge (record). A “Justice Flynn” of St. Joseph, all but certainly he, appointed that February, married a Topeka woman to a Japanese merchant in June 1911, after the groom had asked whether there was a law against it, married two members of a touring theatre company in 1912, and arraigned a 17-year-old for embezzlement in 1913 (source). That September a St. Joseph paper called his grandson Hubert, recovering from a rat bite, “grandson of Justice of the Peace Flynn” (record). In 1912 and 1913 St. Joseph’s congressman, Charles F. Booher, brought in private bills “granting a pension to James M. Flynn” (source). In 1918, at about 72 and living at 1115 Powell Street, he ran in the Democratic primary for justice of the peace; his paid notices asked voters to “encourage the young soldiers by taking care of the old soldiers” (source). He died at St. Joseph on 11 March 1921, and “the funeral of the late Judge James M. Flynn occurred from the Cathedral … and was very largely attended.” Children (Find a Grave): John Henry, William Clifford, Thomas Lafayette, Winifred Ann, Maud Margaret, Bertha G. and Paul Ignatius; the St. Joseph paper adds a son James F., a street-car conductor turned mail carrier.

Open questions

• His regiment and service: the 1865 enlistment register image, the Indian Wars pension index card (FamilySearch 1:1:KDRY-35W) and the pension file (National Archives, RG 15) would give them.
• His birth year, 1846 or 1847 (research/to-decide.md).
• His Missouri death certificate (no. 6112, 1921), free at Missouri Digital Heritage.