Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 131
STEPHEN MAHONEY

Stephen MAHONEY (Portrait), was born in Elkton, Maryland, February 13, 1809, and remained in that location until the month of April, 1850, when in company with numerous other emigrants, he and his family started for the far West, and in due time they reached the Missouri River. They stopped at Council Bluffs, then known as Kanesville, their company numbering about one hundred and thirty in all. He had buried his companion and first wife, Margaret, about three months before leaving his old home in Maryland, but his family of eleven children started with him, one of whom, Lucinda M., died before reaching Council Bluffs.

Mr. MAHONEY, for his second wife, married Martha BEAVER, in Council Bluffs, April 5, 1851; she was one of a party who started from Philadelphia to make the trip to Utah. By this marriage six children were born -- Hyrum S., Dec 27, 1852; Benjamin F., Aug 20, 1854; John T., Jul 4, 1856; Margaret A., May 12, 1858; Elisha, Oct 18, 1860; and Sarah E., Sep 2, 1868.

They came to Harrison County in the spring of 1852, and entered a piece of land on section 33, township 80, range 43, the farm that the widow now lives upon. They built a log cabin sixteen feet square, living there until about 1858, when a frame house one story and a half high was built. Mr. MAHONEY built a saw-mill at this time, which was the first one to cut lumber in Harrison County, and a large throng gathered to see the first slab, which some of the men carried off as a relic.

Prior to the saw-mill being started Stephen had operated a small grist-mill, to which he added the saw-mill and a lath and shingle mill. Judge Jonas CHATBURN, now (1891) of Harlan, Iowa, was a partner of Mr. MAHONEY's for sixteen years, both in farming and milling. They started the first saw and grist mill in the county, propelled by the water of the Willow River which was damned by them, in 1851 and again in 1853, where his son Elisha MAHONEY now lives.

After a long and unusually eventful life, this grand old pioneer, Stephen MAHONEY, passed from the scenes and conflicts of this life to immortality, February 22, 1888.

Margaret, his first wife, was born in Maryland in 1811, and died in the same State, having been mother of eleven children. Her death occurred in 1850. The children born by this wife were as follows: Rachel, Apr 23, 1832; Anna M., Apr 16, 1833; Harriet E., Aug 30, 1834; Theodore, Feb 29, 1836; James H., Mar 28, 1838; Stephen C., Nov 25, 1841; William, Oct 8, 1843; Joseph S., Oct 20, 1845; Hannah M., Sep 17, 1849.

Martha (BEAVER) MAHONEY was born April 11, 1828, in Barnsley, England, and in 1848 she came to Philadelphia, having been married in England to Mr. BEAVER, by whom two children were born, both deceased.

Our subject belonged to the Reorganized Church for over twenty years, and had belonged to the Old Church before coming West, as had his widow, she uniting a short time before leaving Philadelphia for the West.

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