Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1915
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 889
JOHN L. MCCLANNAHAN

There are few men in Harrison county, Iowa, who have had more interesting experiences than J. L. MCCLANNAHAN, who is now living a retired life at Mondamin. Born in Ohio, and reared in that state, and in Indiana, he came to Iowa when he was fifteen years of age and later located in Nebraska. Before reaching manhood he had started to drive an ox team to Salt Lake City, and later went on to California. He worked in a half dozen of the western states, mining and doing various other things. By the time he was twenty-three years of age, he had returned to his old home in Iowa. At that time he had passed through more experiences than usually falls to the lot of average man. He remained in Iowa only a short time, however, going on west to Denver, Colorado. He returned to Harrison county in 1867 and here he has since made his home. Few men in the county have held more official positions than Mr. MCCLANNAHAN and no one has held them more satisfactorily. He has prospered, but his prosperity has been the direct result of his own legitimate efforts. At the same time he has so lived as to merit the high esteem in which he is held throughout the county.

John L. MCCLANNAHAN, the son of Andrew and Catherine (ASHCRAFT) MCCLANNAHAN, was born on July 9, 1841, in Muskingum county, Ohio, the second in order of birth of seven children born to his parents, who were both natives of Ohio of Scotch-Irish descent. The family moved from Ohio to Greene county, Indiana, in 1847, where they lived until 1856. In that year the family drove through in wagons drawn by two yokes of cows, and arrived on June 10, 1856, in Harrison county, Iowa, just south of Magnolia. The cows which patiently pulled the wagons across the plains also supplied the family with butter and milk along the road. The MCCLANNAHANs remained in Harrison county until that fall, when they moved across the Missouri river to Cummings City, Nebraska, which town had just recently been started.

John L. MCCLANNAHAN received most of his education in Indiana, and after removing with his parents to Nebraska, began to work by the day for farmers in the immediate neighborhood. When seventeen years of age he went to Nebraska City, where he secured a job as a driver on a freight crew, going across the plains to Salt Lake City. He was one of thirty-six drivers and each driver had charge of six yoke of oxen. He was an employee of contractors for the United States government and remained with them until the wagons were safely across the plains and in Salt Lake City. From that point Mr. MCCLANNAHAN went on to California and remained in Los Angeles until January, 1859. He lived in California and Nevada for about five years, during which period he spent most of his time in the mines. At one time, while working in a tunnel, a big boulder fell on him and broke his thigh. At that time there was ten feet of snow in the mountains. His friends sent for a doctor and the trip both ways being made on snow shoes. The doctor was only four miles away, but it took six hours to make the trip. Mr. MCCLANNAHAN made considerable money while mining, but, like most of the western miners at that time, saved very little of it.

Mr. MCCLANNAHAN returned to Ohio on a visit in 1864 and shortly afterward located in Harrison county, Iowa, his parents again having moved to this county. He remained home one winter and then went to Denver, where he stayed for several months, driving oxen. He returned to Harrison county in 1867, where he married and bought forty acres of swamp land in Clay township. He built a rude log cabin, in which he and his young wife started to housekeeping. He lived in this cabin for eight years, and then bought another eighty acres of land, on which a house already had been built. Mr. MCCLANNAHAN rented his farm in Clay township and moved to Mondamin in 1888. At the same time he bought eighty acres in Morgan township, on which he built a good house. He has since added to this Morgan township farm, until he now has one hundred and twenty-seven acres of land in that township, besides his town property. He has a very comfortable city home, which is modern and up-to-date in every way. He owns three hundred and ten acres of the best bottom land in Clay township and also eighty acres two miles north of the Missouri Valley fair grounds, in St. Johns township, owning altogether five hundred and thirty acres in Harrison county. That he has been successful as a farmer, is amply evidenced by his extensive land holdings. He is president of the Mondamin Savings Bank, an institution in which he is heavily interested as a stockholder.

Mr. MCCLANNAHAN was married on May 27, 1867, to Frances TEETER, who was born in Jefferson county, Iowa, a daughter of Isaac K. and Elizabeth (BROWN) Teeter, natives of Pennsylvania, who came west at the same time that the MCCLANNAHAN family did. Mr. and Mrs. MCCLANNAHAN have three children, Rosa, May and Everett E. Rosa married Dr. J. L. Tamisea, of Missouri Valley, and has one child, Xavier. May married E. M. Hitchcock, a farmer of this county, and has three children, Francis, George and Will MCCLANNAHAN. Everett E. married Jessie E. Brawley and died in January, 1911, leaving six children, Mildred, Naomi, John, Fern, Beth M. and Kenneth E. Kenneth lives with his grandfather, since his mother's death. Everett is secretary of the Morgan township school board.

Mr. MCCLANNAHAN has always taken an active interest in the civic life of his community. He has been a life-long Democrat and always active in its deliberations. He has served on the town council of Mondamin for ten years and on the school board for three years. He also served for three years on the school board of Clay township, of which township he has also been trustee for three terms and assessor for one term. While living in Morgan township he was also trustee of that township, and in all of these official positions has given his fellow citizens faithful and conscientious service. He has now retired from active life, but still gives his personal supervision to his extensive land holdings. He is one of the pioneers of the county and is eminently entitled to representation in the annals of his county's history.

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