Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1915
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 586
J. FRANK MCGAVREN

The MCGAVREN family is one of the old pioneer families of Harrison county. The grandfather of J. Frank MCGAVREN having located at the old town of St. John, Harrison county, about 1854. The family has long been identified with the agricultural interests of this county and four generations have lived on the same farm in St. Johns township, about two miles south of Missouri Valley. The father of Jr. Frank MCGAVREN was instrumental in getting the Mormons out of western Iowa, and a man who exerted a great deal of influence in the early history of the county.

J. Frank MCGAVREN, the son of G. W. and Sylvania K. (KEHLER) MCGAVREN, was born in the little village of St. John, Harrison county, Iowa, November 10, 1886. His father was born in Hardin county, Iowa, in 1849, and his mother in Etna Green, Indiana. G. W. MCGAVREN was a son of Dr. Robert MCGAVREN and came to Council Bluffs with his parents on May 6, 1850, when he was about one year of age. It took six weeks for Doctor MCGAVREN to make the trip by boat. Council Bluffs at that time was called Kanesville, and the family settled in Pottawattamie county, Iowa, and lived there until about 1854. In that year the family moved to Harrison county and located in St. Johns township in the village of St. John, and there G. W. MCGAVREN lived until his death, with the exception of a few years which he spent in Missouri Valley.

G W. MCGAVREN was a farmer and stockman and a very successful man of affairs. He fed large numbers of cattle and hogs for the marker, and one winter made thirty-two trips to Chicago with cattle for the markets. He died June 23, 1902, at the age if fifty-three, and his widow is now living with her son, J. Frank, in St. John. Seven children were born to G. W. MCGAVREN and wife, and J. Frank is the only one living. His father had previously married Eliza C. Roland, but the one child born to his first union is deceased.

When the MCGAVRENs came to Council Bluffs there were only two mercantile houses in the village and these were housed in rude log cabins. The maternal grandmother of J. Frank MCGAVREN, Mrs. James K. Chinworth, was a native of Ohio and lived in Indiana the greater part of her life. She is now in her ninetieth year and lives with her son and daughter, F. C. Kehler and Ida Chinworth, at old St. John, in this county.

J. Frank MCGAVREN was educated in the public schools of the county and in the Missouri Valley high school, and as a young man he worked on his father's farm and later engaged in the grocery business in Missouri Valley for a time. He now lives on his farm two miles south of Missouri Valley, the same farm which has been in the hands of the family for more than sixty years. The farm is well improved and is one of the most productive in the county.

Mr. MCGAVREN was married June 12, 1907, to Dessie V. GAVER, the daughter of Mrs. E. J. Gaver, of Missouri Valley, and to this union two sons have been born, William and Bruce.

Mr. MCGAVREN is a Democrat, and has been one of the local leaders in his party since reaching his majority. He is a member of the Knights of Pythias, belonging to the lodge at Missouri Valley. He is in the full vigor of young manhood and has already demonstrated those qualities which make the good American citizen.

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