Ramsey County History – Winter 2004: “‘He Loved a Tall Story’ The Life and Times of I.A. O’Shaughnessy, the Man Who Happily Gave His Money Away”

‘He Loved a Tall Story’ The Life and Times of I.A. O’Shaughnessy, the Man Who Happily Gave His Money Away 
Authors: John M. Lindley and Virginia Brainard Kunz

Born in 1885, Ignatius Aloysius O’Shaughnessy was an oilman and philanthropist. His parents, who were of Irish decent, moved to Minnesota around 1861 and became active members of the city’s strong Irish-Catholic community that centered on St. Michael’s Church in Stillwater. O’Shaughnessy’s father was a small businessman in a lumbering town and I. A., as he was known, was surrounded by lumberjacks and later talked about them and their stories. He loved telling his own tall tales throughout his life. He enrolled in college at St. John’s in 1901 and played football, then a new sport. Because of an incident, he was expelled in 1902 and transferred to St. Thomas, where he became a mainstay of the football team. After graduation, O’Shaughnessy became secretary of the Amateur Athletic Association of St. Paul. He married Lillian Smith in 1908 and then left St. Paul to join his brother in Texas and later started a tire business in Kansas, where he soon got into the oil industry. Lillian didn’t like Texas or Kansas and got the family to move back to Minnesota. They soon bought a home at 1705 Summit Avenue where they lived for the rest of their lives. Because O’Shaughnessy concentrated on building oil refineries, his company flourished and became one of the largest independently owned oil businesses in the world. I.A. enjoyed doing things with his family, fishing, and travelling. In the 1930s, O’Shaughnessy became an active philanthropist making major gifts to the College of St. Thomas and other charities. Soon he organized his own foundation, which made education its focus. He also made gifts to a number of universities, such Notre Dame, and helped pay for the Ecumenical Institute for Advanced Theological Study in response to a request from Pope Paul VI for O’Shaughnessy’s support. After Lillian died in 1958, I. A. experienced a “gray period” in his life, but in 1966 he married Blanche Finn. O’Shaughnessy died in 1973.
PDF of Lindley & Kunz article