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The story of "Nancy" Anna Daugherty 1815-1889 and James McShane 1808-1866

Records from St. Paul's Cathedral in Pittsburgh show that "Anna Dougherty" married James McShane II on November 27, 1835. The pair operated a grocery store for nearly 30 years at 22 Irwin Street (now 7th St.) in Pittsburgh. Nancy's obituary in 1889 said that she and James "conducted the principal boat store in that end of the city and accumulated a comfortable living." The family also lived there, according to the address directories of the period.
The McShanes operated their store until the mid 1860s, when the death of James McShane prompted his widow to close it. Nancy Anna and James McShane had a dozen children, of whom six lived to adulthood, including Anne Elizabeth McShane, (1840-1906) who married George Charles Pitfield.(1840-1908) on October 3, 1867 in St. Paul's Cathedral in Pittsburgh.








The McShanes furnished the crews of river boats with groceries and other things they needed to travel on the nearby rivers. Pittsburgh in the 1840s had a population of about 40,000, centered on the triangle area where the Allegheny and Monongehela rivers met. It was a river town (the first railroads did not come until the 1850s). A contemporaneous account of the Monogehela River at Grant street wharf was "a solid line of boats so continuous that you could step from one to another". Anna had a long life. Her obituary in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette in 1889 noted, "There were few residents of the fourth ward who were not indebted to her good offices for substantial acts of kindness and well as words and neighborly advice. She was an admirable raconteur, having a remarkable memory and having witnessed the city rise from a few thousand inhabitants to the present wonderful status. She was a practical Christian, being one of the oldest, if not the very oldest, member of St. Paul's Cathedral congregation. Her integrity, amiability and other graces of the head and heart were manifold." James McShane II and Nancy Anna Daugherty McShane are both buried in St. Mary's Cemetery.

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