The subject of this sketch, M.F. Shea, a prosperous farmer of Meredith township and a brother of James Shea, is a native of Syracuse, Missouri, born in 1860. He came to Kansas with the family in 1868, and located at Leavenworth, but one year later returned to Missouri. They came to Kansas again in 1872, and Mr. Shea bought the relinquishment to a timber claim of C.P. Carpenter which he improved and lived on five years and then bought eighty acres adjoining his mother's farm where he still lives.

Mr. Shea started in life with absolutely no capital, but by his brawn and muscle has acquired a comfortable fortune. He now owns two hundred and forty acres of land, making stock raising his chief industry. He raises hogs extensively and has a fine herd of Hereford bred cattle. In 1883 he erected a comfortable stone residence doing most of the masonry himself.

Mr. Shea was married the same year to Maggie, a daughter of John Dooley, who was at one time a farmer of Cloud county, but is now retired and living at Concordia. Her mother was Mary Ann Murphy. Her parents were both of Irish birth. John Dooley came to America when a young man about twenty-one years of age and settled in New York City where he became a coachman in the family of a wealthy New Yorker. He later settled in Lebanon, Ohio, where he met and married Miss Murphy, who came from Ireland with her parents when a child. They settled in Cloud county in 1881, where Mrs. Dooley died in 1887. Mrs. Shea is one of three children, two of whom are living; a sister, Mary, wife of Michael Hart, a farmer of Ottawa county, Kansas.

Mr. and Mrs. Shea are the parents of six children, viz: James, aged fourteen; William, aged eleven; Mark, aged nine; Thomas, Margaret and Lewis, aged respectively six, four and two years. Mr. Shea is a Bryan Democrat and takes an interest in political affairs. He has served as constable, treasurer and trustee of his township, and has been suggested by his friends for sheriff. Mr. Shea acquired his early education in a dugout at Meredith. He is considered one of the leading citizens of his township. They are members of the Catholic church, St. Peter's congregation.