Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 619
JAMES D. MCKENNEY

James D. MCKENNEY, was born in Cass County, Michigan, February 3, 1844. He is the son of Michael I. and Anna Eliza (TOWNSEND) MCKENNEY, and was the sixth of a family of eight children. He attended two terms of school in Michigan and completed his education in the district schools of Harrison County. The first school he attended in this county was in the winter of 1852-53, in a log schoolhouse on section 6, of Union Township. The school was taight by George WHITE.

Our subject has always made his home at the old homestead and now lives on the original land taken by his father in 1851. The father died in 1858, and in the spring of 1860, the mother rented the farm to Samuel JACK and went to Michigan, and returned in the fall, but our subject remained here all summer and worked for Mr. JACK, continuing for two years, the first year for his board and clothes, but the last year he received $8 per month. It will be remembered that he was only in his sixteenth year, and in the fall of 1868 he took charge of the place and operated it, his mother keeping house for him until the atuumn of 1879, when he bought the other heirs' interest in a hundred and twenty acres, which he still owns.

He was married February 6, 1879, to Alpharetta DAKAN, a native of Morrow County, Ohio, born December 22, 1854, and is the youngest of a family of three children by Mr. DAKAN's second marriage, her parents being Ebenezer and Charity (WAGSTAFF) DAKAN. The father was married three times and had five children by his first marriage. The father died in Union Township, August 9, 1883, and the mother died March 10, 1863.

Mr. and Mrs. MCKENNEY are the parents of four children, all living -- Herbert E., born November 14, 1879; Inman R., September 6, 1881; Guy E. and Nellie E., (twins), October 10, 1888.

Mr. MCKENNEY and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, having united in 1890. He is a member of the Ancient Order of United Workmen at Logan. Politically our subject has always voted with the Republican party, but at present is in sympathy with the Farmer's Alliance movement.

He has been a successful farmer, and while he has seen his share of hard times, he has always been surrounded with the ordinary comforts of home life, but well remembers how glad he used to be to see visitors come to their house, for it was upon such occasions that wheat bread was served. Now that these days of hardships have with him forever passed, he can better enjoy the suroundings of his own fireside.

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