Notable World War I Pilot. A native of Chicago, Illinois, he became a member of the renowned Lafayette Escadrille of American volunteers. After graduating from the Haverford School in Pennsylvania, he entered the University of Virginia in 1907. He spent two years in the College and a year in the Law School, withdrawing from his studies in the spring of 1910. After several years in business in New York and in Carthage, North Carolina, where he served as land and industrial agent for a small railroad, McConnell sailed from New York with a friend in January 1915, to enlist in the French service. Through the spring and summer of 1915 he drove for Section "Y" of the American Ambulance, in the thick of the fighting on the Western Front, around Pont-a-Mousson and theBois-le-Pretre. He was cited for conspicuous bravery and awarded the Croix de Guerre. A deepening conviction of the rightness of the French cause led him to volunteer for service in French aviation. He trained at the flying school at Pau and earned his wings on February 6, 1916.On April 20, 1916 he joined the newly-formed American Escadrille (later re-designated the Lafayette Escadrille) at its operational base at Luxeuil-les-Bains, becoming one of the first four of the seven original Escadrille pilots to arrive. He participated in the squadron's first patrol on May 13, 1916, and in the aerial actions during the great German offensive at Verdun in June and the Allied counteroffensives in July and August. On July 1, 1916, he was promoted to sergeant, the rank which he held until his death. He lost his life in aerial combat with two German planes, above the Somme battlefields, near the village of Flavy-le-Martel, Aisne, and became the last American pilot of the squadron to dieunder French colors, before American entrance into the war in April 1917. His body initially laid to rest where he fell, and was later re-interred at his present place of honor in accordance with his father's wishes. McConnell was memorialized with a plaque from the French government, a statue called 'The Aviator' by Gutzon Borglum at the University of Virginia, and with an obelisk on the court square of his home town of Carthage, North Carolina.