Michael H. Pendergast, a member of the Irish community that settled in the Lannon area and along Town Line Road in Lisbon, once owned the land where Willow Springs Mobile Home Court stands today on McLaughlin Road, 1½ blocks west of Town Line Road and Highway 74.
According to the “Waukesha County 1894 Portrait and Biographical Record,” Michael was the son of Michael and Mary Pendergast, who were both born in Ireland. A relative of William Lannon, the village’s namesake, Mary lived in Lannon when she met her future husband.
A member of St. James Catholic Church, the elder Michael bought 160 acres immediately north of today’s Willow Springs Mobile Homes on land that later served as a quarry (now owned by Halquist Stone Co.). He later bought some more land on today’s Mill Road that protruded into what is now the Silver Spring County Club golf course.
The couple parented nine children, three sons and six daughters: Anna, twins Thomas and Michael H., Jennie, Agnes, Kate, Lucy, William and Sallie, who lived only four years, dying in 1881. In 1894, eight were still alive.
Though Michael received only a short primary school education himself, he educated his eight surviving children at great expense.
Thomas went to the Lannon-Willow Springs school, then Carroll College. He studied medicine at the Chicago Medical College, graduating in 1893 as a surgeon before moving to Milwaukee
Jennie and Agnes also went to Carroll College, as did William, who trained as a teacher at Northern Indiana Normal College of Valparaiso.
Born Nov. 30, 1865, just as the Civil War ended, as H. M. Pendergast, Michael H. was reared to take over the family farm, but he still received a complete grade school education that led to three years at Carroll College and, afterward, a job teaching in Waukesha schools for five terms (one-third of a school year).
He then managed his father’s farm and expanded it southward another 111 acres.
Just like his father, Michael H. was a Democrat, casting his first presidential vote for Grover Cleveland. He took a keen interest in politics, serving eight two-year terms as Lisbon’s elected town clerk and as the (Willow Springs) District School’s elected clerk for many years.
He also served as a Waukesha County Sheriff’s deputy under Sheriffs Charles Deissner and Chris Gaynor.
As he entered old age, Michael H. sold his farm to Ed McLaughlin, who, with his former wife, Dorothy, a teacher, raised a pack of kids in the big old farmhouse. When McLaughlin had had it with farming, he started the Willow Springs Mobile Home Court, but then sold if to investor-managers.
Ed and his kids are major landowners in Sussex-Lisbon today.