Alois B. Renehan, 1870s

Item — Box: 59.2

Identifier: HP.2020.3.1

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This tintype is a portrait of Alois Bernard Renehan (1869–1928) as a child. It is probably from the early to mid 1870s.

Dates

1870s

Biographical / Historical

Renehan’s grandfather and father lived and worked in the Washington DC area, and there’s a good chance that the tintype was made there by a skilled but unidentified photographer, or in New York City where his father Frank worked as an associate editor of the New York Tribune for Horace Greeley.

Renehan studied law at Georgetown and moved to New Mexico in 1892 at the age of 23. He married trading post operator Jake Gold’s sister, Zeporah Gold. It was supposedly a family scandal, as Renehan was Catholic and Gold Jewish. They divorced around 1907. "It is said that Alois outraged his Democratic, Irish Catholic family four times,” Edward Renehan wrote Mike Lord. “First, when he refused the priesthood; second, when he married Zeporah; third, when he divorced her and married a divorced woman; and finally, when he left the Democratic Party and joined the party of Lincoln."

Renehan became a powerful and influential local. He established a successful legal practice in Santa Fe and got involved in politics. His private practice in law spanned criminal defense, land issues, and civil cases like divorce. He also ventured into real estate, insurance, investment/speculation, and banking, and served on the chamber of commerce, as a city attorney, a city councilor, a state representative and a state senator. He had an office on the Plaza in the “Renehan Building” and lived at 729½ Palace. He was close with Thomas Catron, and he is often considered a member or an associate of the Santa Fe Ring.