Sheridan, Peter (1792-1844), sheep breeder and wool merchant, was born in Co. Cavan in the bosom of a well-known Anglo-Irish family with protestant background. He was a brother to Richard Sheridan, landowner, and Hugh Thomas Sheridan (1812-1866), physician. The three brothers Sheridan settled in Buenos Aires, arriving Peter in 1817. They opened a textile merchant house in the city. 

In 1824 Peter Sheridan purchased one hundred head of merino sheep imported by the government of Buenos Aires from Rambouillet, near Paris. Six years later, he established in partnership with John Harrat the estancia Los Sajones near Ranchos. In this district, Sheridan was appointed member of the city council. Sheridan and Harrat "produced large quantities of premium wool from the favoured merino breeds, Saxony elector and negrete. At the time of his death in 1844, Sheridan owned forty-thousand purebred and mestizo animals grazing on sixteen puestos. [Juan Manuel de] Rosas solicited his advice on combating sarna" (Slatta 1992). With his brother Richard, Sheridan established a meat-curing plant and opened a store in Ranchos. In 1832 Peter Sheridan was appointed inspector of the harbour at Riachuelo. Sheridan was one of the founders of the Strangers' Club of Buenos Aires, and a respected member of the local merchant community. He married Mary, née Butterworth. They had two children, Isabel and Enrique Sheridan (1836-1860), a landscapist and lithographer disciple of Juan Leon Pallière. 

Peter Sheridan died on 8 January 1844 in Ranchos.

Edmundo Murray

References

- Coghlan, Eduardo A., Los Irlandeses en la Argentina: Su Actuación y Descendencia (Buenos Aires, 1987), p. 833.

- Murray, Thomas, The Story of the Irish in Argentina (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1919), pp. 55, 93, 125.

- Slatta, Richard, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992).