Nicholas A. Connick is believed to have been of Irish descent, but he was born about 1837 in Pennsylvania. However, he didn’t remain there. Unlike the majority of immigrant Irish who settled in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and the industrial northwest, Connick was living in Texas at the outbreak of the Civil War.
He seems to have had a fairly good education since, on August 26, 1861, he enlisted as a sergeant in Capt. Charles Mason’s Company D, Cook’s Battalion, 1st Texas Heavy Artillery. By October, 1861, he was with the Pelican Battery at Galveston, defending the Texas coast from ships of the Union Navy.
Connick’s military service was short, however, as he was discharged on November 22, 1861, after being promoted to the rank of major. Thereafter, he served the Confederate cause as chief clerk in a Houston commissary. A Confederate coupon from 1864, worth two dollars in groceries, bears his signature, written in a fair hand.
On April 27, 1862, Connick married Nathalia F. Gaye in Christ Church, Houston, Texas. The 1880 federal census found Nicholas Connick living in the newly-formed county of Somervell, Texas, and working as a bookkeeper. By this time, he was a widower.
Sometime before 1891, Connick arrived in Phoenix, Arizona,
where he opened a saloon near the train depot.
The Great Flood of 1891 forced the relocation of the establishment to
higher ground.
Perhaps competition drove Connick out of the saloon business, as the 1892 city directory of Phoenix listed him as an accountant. In addition to being proficient with figures, he was regarded as being a sociable, cultured man and a brilliant conversationalist, with vivid memories of the Civil War.
On November 18, 1898, Connick died of typhoid at the county hospital in Phoenix. Although his death certificate suggests that he was to be buried in the county cemetery, his old comrades arranged to have him interred as a veteran in Porter Cemetery. No grave marker survives.
- Donna L. Carr
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