Macoupin County
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Biography - THOMAS J. COSTELLO

Thomas J. Costello was born in Western Mound township, Macoupin county. He is a son of the late John and Ellen Costello, highly respected pioneer residents. Mr. Costello was the fifth child of a family of ten children. When a lad his parents moved from Western Mound to Bird township where they resided for a few years, moving back to Western Mound in the year 1888. The boyhood life of Mr. Costello was not much different from that of the average country youth. He attended country schools and when he had finished the eighth grade went to Western Normal College, at Bushnell, Illinois. He attended there for a part of two years where he fitted himself for teaching. In 1899 he secured and taught his first school. He continued, in this work for eleven years, spending his summer vacations working on the farm.

In 1909 he was offered and accepted the position of Deputy Circuit Clerk and Recorder under the late Thomas Cain. He continued with Mr. Cain for two terms of four years each. At the expiration at his second term as deputy clerk under Mr. Cain, which was in 1916, Mr. Costello spent two years in which he prepared a set of abstract books, which occupied his time until 1918, when he opened an abstract office for himself in Carlinville, in which business he is engaged today. Mr. Costello, not having been born in the lap of luxury, necessarily made his own way since leaving the country schools. He always put his best efforts into any undertaking in which he was engaged, having in mind that a job that was worth undertaking was worth doing well. In the position of school teacher, deputy circuit clerk and of conducting his own business he has been conscientious, painstaking and diligent, and success has followed. Mr. Costello takes pride in the fact that he never went back on a friend.

Mr. Costello's many friends all over Macoupin county know him and appreciate his worth for the excellent citizen that he is. Mr. Costello is of Irish descent.


Extracted 15 Dec 2018 by Norma Hass from History of a Famous Courthouse, by W. B. Brown, published in 1934, page 44.


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