McMahon, Joseph 1819 – 1895

MCMAHON

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 5/19/2024 at 21:00:46

Source: Decorah Republican Sept. 19, 1895 P 4 C 1

JOSEPH McMAHON.
Another of the Pioneer Fathers laid away to rest.
Joseph McMahon died at Freeport on the 12th and was laid in his grave on the 13th. The particulars as to his life in our possession are meagre. Born in Ireland in 1819 he was six years past the allotted three-score-and-ten when he died. In July, 1855, he came to Decorah and soon after built the little home on east Main street next east of Herman Jaeger’s, where he lived most of these forty intervening years. It was a hospitable home, too. Often, before a church of his faith was built the wandering priest received a cordial welcome. The good Catholics would be invited and Mass be celebrated. His last years were those of poverty and weakness—of sickness in his aged wife, who preceded him to the other side a year ago; but amid all the trials of life he bore a gentle, cheerful spirit, and his friends will not soon forget the cheery greeting he always gave in passing salutations.