Career
He served in the 10th Ohio Infantry. After studying in Maynooth at the Royal College of St. Patrick’s, he was sent to British Guiana in the West Indies. He arrived in Philadelphia on May 23, 1857 and joined the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
From 1860 to 1861, he was the assistant to Rev. Richard Gilmour at St. Patrick's in Cincinnati. After difficulties in Cincinnati, William wrote the Archbishop, John B. Purcell, requesting a position as chaplain.
This "removed him from a thorny personnel situation by responding to an obvious wartime need". He was commissioned as chaplain of the 10th Ohio Infantry on June 3, 1861, in which he served until June 17, 1864. By 1871, he had returned to Ohio, this time to Cleveland, where he taught at St. Mary's Seminary for one term and subsequently served 6 months as pastor of St. Augustine's Church, Cleveland.
In 1973 he returned to County Leitrim, Ireland, where he died November 4, 1874.