Patrick Albert Largey

Patrick A. Largey was born on April 2, 1838, on a farm in Perry County, Ohio, the youngest of eleven children of Patrick and Jane (Cassilly) Largey. As a young man he taught in rural schools to pay for his education at St. Joseph's College at Somerset, Ohio. After graduating, he continued teaching for a time, and then moved to Cincinnati, where he became a bookkeeper. He then traveled by steamboat to Keokuk, Iowa, where he worked for two years as a clerk in a dry goods store. When that store failed, he returned to Ohio, where he saved enough money to open his own store in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1861. He sold the store a year later and went to work as a purchasing agent for the freighting business of his cousin Edward Creighton.

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