page_title: James E. O'Hara
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: James E. O'Hara / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: O'Hara family portrait (Elizabeth Eleanor, James E., and Raphael) ca. 1883.
context_page_description: James Edward O'Hara was an American politician and attorney who in 1882, after Reconstruction, was the second African American to be elected to Congress from North Carolina. He was born in New York City to parents of mixed-race West Indian and Irish ancestry and was raised in the West Indies. As a young man, he traveled to the southern United States after the American Civil War with religious missionaries from the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, an independent black denomination, to help freedmen establish independent lives and new congregations. O'Hara became active in politics, being elected as a Republican to local and state offices.
  O'Hara passed the bar in North Carolina in 1873 and started a law practice there. In 1878, he ran for Congress and won, but his white opponent was ruled the winner by corrupt public officials. In 1882, O'Hara was elected as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from North Carolina's 2nd congressional district, where there was a black majority. He served two terms. After being defeated in the 1886 election, he returned to his law practice.
context_section_description: O'Hara married 22-year-old Ann Maria Harris, in New Bern, on March 16, 1864.  Two years later, he moved to Goldsboro, accepting a teaching position.  However, Ann refused to move there with him, even after becoming pregnant.  Their relationship deteriorated, and O'Hara stopped seeing Ann, who moved to Boston and changed her surname to "Cowan."  It is unclear if he ever saw their child.
  After Ann left him, O'Hara met and married Elizabeth Eleanor Harris, who went by "Libby, on July 14, 1869.  Elizabeth was from a prominent family in Oberlin, Ohio.  She had relocated to the South, after the War to teach freedmen.
  In 1878, when he ran for Congress, O'Hara was accused of bigamy because of his two marriages. Asserting that he had obtained a legal divorce from Ann without her knowledge, O'Hara denied the accusation.  
  He and Elizabeth had a son, Raphael. Raphael earned a law degree in 1895 at Shaw University and joined his father in his law practice, by then in New Bern, North Carolina. Raphael was the "first second-generation black lawyer in the state" and practiced for nearly 50 years.
  O'Hara was a Roman Catholic. He died in New Bern on September 15, 1905 at the age of 61. Elizabeth O'Hara died on January 30, 1930 at the age of 80.  Raphael O'Hara died on October 30, 1952, also at the age of 80.
caption: O'Hara family portrait (Elizabeth Eleanor, James E., and Raphael) ca. 1883.
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