1.

',.

The upper photo on the facing page shows the Harrington

family, and was taken about 1890. The father, John Harrington,

died in 1879, and one girl, Margaret, had died as an twelve year

old child in 1872. The surviving members are as follows:

Seated, left to right - Mary Ann (Harrington) Lyons, born 1858, wife of Jer Lyons.

Mary (Horen) Harrington, mother of the family, born

in1838 in Ireland.

Sarah (Harrington) Roche, wife of Phil Roche.

Annie (Harrington) Fleming, wife of Bernard Fleming.

Standing, left to right - Margaret (Harrington) Soelfohn, born 1873, wife of Louis

Soelfohn. After Louis' death Margaret married John Walsh.

Maurice Harrington, born 1857. He married

Kathryn Lyons.

Katie (Harrington) Walsh, first wife of John

Walsh.

Missing from photo - Lizzie (Harrington) Mullaney, wife of John Mullaney. The lower photo on the facing page shows four of the daughters of Jerry and Ellen (Whalen) Lyons. It was taken in Madison, South Dakota in 1890. Starting at the top and proceeding clockwise they are as follows:

Ellen (Lyons) Coughlin, wife of James Coughlin. Ellen was born

in New York in 1849

Bridget (Lyons) Rei, wife of John Rei. Bridget was born in Ireland

in 1844.

Margaret (Lyons) Kane, wife of Timothy Kane. Margaret is the

oldest child in the family and was born in Ireland in 1842.

Kathryn (Lyons) Harrington, wife of Maurice Harrington. Kate

was born in Chicago in 1857.

"

On the facing page the figure on the left is Johanna Lyons, second wife of Pat

Lyons. This marriage produced three children; Pat, William, and Bridget (Lyons)

Delaney. Johanna also had two daughters by previous marriages and Pat had

three children by his first marriage so it was a case of "your kids, my kids, and

our kids". They were married in Illinois, lived in the Irish community near Burr Oak,

Iowa, while the kids were growing up, and then homesteaded in Dakota in the

1880s. Johanna is seated in front of their house on the farm that is now known

as the Deragish place, in Nunda Township, she died there in 1900.

The figure on the right is Johanna's son, Pat, who was the principal farmer when

they lived on that place. Pat never married, and came upon hard times in later

life, he died in Sioux City in the 'thirties.

The couple pictured at the top of the facing page is Mary Ann and Jeremiah

(Jer) Lyons. They were married In the Plymouth Rock Catholic Church near

Burr Oak, Iowa, in 1882 and left to homestead In Dakota Territory a few

days after the wedding. Mary Ann's maiden name was Harrington, she was

born In New York in 1858, Jer was born in Chicago in 1855. The house of

the place that they homesteaded is in the southeast quarter of section eight,

In Nunda Township; Mary Ann continued to live there until her death in

1943, Jer had died in 1893 from pneumonia. Five children were born to this

rnarrlage: Bessie (Lyons) Schuster, Richard Lyons, John Lyons, Nelle

(Lyons) Mailand, and Mary (Lyons) McDonald.

Will Lyons, younger brother of Jer, is shown at lower left, Will was a young

boy when the Lyons family moved from Chicago to Iowa. He came to

Dakota In 1884 and farmed and managed a large operation In partnership

with his brothers for a time, winning a lifetime nickname as "The Boss" in

the process. He was married in 1887 to Kate Crossgrove, he and Miss Kitty

raised a large family; eight of the thirteen survived to become adults,

including Dennis, Ann, James, Jerry, Bill, Mary Robinson, Tom and Bob.

After Will's father died In 1894, he and Miss Kitty moved onto his place,

adjacent to the now widowed Mary Ann, and these two sets of cousins grew

up as close neighbors until the Will Lyons family moved to Charles Mix

County In 1901.

The three boys together are three of the Coughlin children, sons of Ellen

(Lyons) Coughlin, who was a sister to Jer and Will. Her husband, James,

and another brother, Richard Lyons, were partners In a Mercantile business

In Carthage, S. Dak., and the Coughlin family of ten children grew up there.

The boys shown In the photo are Will, Rich and John. The other children are

Thomas ("Brick"), Carthage, Joseph, Margaret Weiland, Charlie, Mary

Sheets, and Catherine.

2. '\

3.

The three figures on the upper left of the facing page show Sarah (Donlon) Lyons

flanked by two of her children, Josephine (Lyons) Peisch and Thomas Lyons.

Sarah was a school teacher in and around Burr Oak, Iowa, around 1880, one of

her pupils there became famous in later life as Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of The

Little House on the Prairie, and other books of that series. Sarah married Richard

Lyons after his first wife died, they raised a large family while living in Carthage,

and later in Vermillion, South Dakota. Jo married Arch Peisch, a professor at

Dartmouth University, they had three boys, Francis, Mark and Dan. Tom, like

several of his brothers, became an attorney, and eventually served as a Justice

of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma. Other children of this family were Jeremiah,

Richard, Sarah, Alice, James, Margaret, Robert Donlon, William and Dennis.

The fourth figure in the top row is Joe Flynn. Joe's parents, Tom and Ellen

(Whalen) Flynn came from Iowa and homesteaded in Nunda Twp. Their children

were John, Joe, Mame Kehrwaid, and Julia McCabe, all except Julia were

childless. John and Joe farmed the home place as partners until their deaths in

1964, and were leading citizens in the area. Joe, who was a veteran of WWI, was

married to Matilda Schnell.

On the left In the bottom row is Nan Rei, later Nan Coffey, who was the only child

of John and Bridget (Lyons) Rei, Rei's homesteaded what is now known as the

Demarey place in Nunda Twp. Nan and Ed Coffey had one child, an adopted son,

Joe Coffey, who later farmed the same place. Joe's daughter, Patty, and her

brother were cared for by the Bill McGinty family In Nunda after Joe and his wife

were divorced.

Next to Nan is John Harrington, the only child of Maurice and Kathryn (Lyons)

Harrington, who lived near Nunda briefly and farmed south of Madison for many

years. John's three children, Marlfrances, Peggy and John were frequent visitors

to the Madison and Nunda areas In the 1930s.

The remaining two are Angela (Lyons) Haney, and her brother, Dennis Lyons,

who are two of the children of Dennis A. and Catherine (Fitzgerald) Lyons, of

Cresco, Iowa. Other children of that family include Mame McHugh, Jeremiah,

John, Joseph, Gerald and Leonard.

'"

On the facing page we again Introduce The Boss and

Miss Kitty, taking their ease on the car's running board,

along with Will's sister, Kate (Lyons) Harrington.

Beside them, Nan and Ed Coffey pose in a portrait that

shows why they were thought to be one of the most

handsome couples In the community.

One summer day in 1934, part of the Richard and

Sarah (Donlon) Lyons family were standing around on

the lawn, visiting, so somebody gathered them together

Into a bunch and took a snapshot. Sarah Is at the left,

fifty years have passed since we saw her earlier photo

as the teacher of Laura Ingalls, she has weathered

them well. Archibald and Josephine (Lyons) Peisch

stand next, then Sarah, Jo's older sister, with her arms

on the shoulders of her nephews, Francis and Mark

Peisch. Sarah's brother James stands behind her while

another brother, Jerry, and a sister, Margaret, complete

the scene.

We also have here a third photo opportunity to meet

Mary Ann (Harrington) Lyons, nearing eighty now, and

still busy with the farm that she and Jer built. Here she

rests for a moment from the day's toil, In the company

of her grandson, Dick McDonald, and her dog, Rusty.

'"

The facing page shows us an 1899 portrait of two young cousins who

were also neighbors, Mary Lyons (later to be Mrs. John McDonald),

youngest daughter of Jer and Mary Ann, and Jerry Lyons, 4th child of

The Boss and Miss Kitty. Jerry was to become an Omaha dentist in

later life.

Thirty years later, Mary was at home on the McDonald farm when her

sister Nelle Mailand came to visit, driving the 1929 Nash automobile

that their brother, John Lyons, had recently purchased. It seemed like a

good day for some pictures, so Mary posed, first with sister Nelle, and

then with her five children; Genevieve, Dick, Billy, Dean and Jerry.

About that same time, a small, noisy biplane came droning around the

area, taking pictures of farms, and hoping to sell the result to the

farmers. It worked out in this case, so that the farm where John and

Mary McDonald were raising their young family, and where The Boss

and Miss Kitty had lived when Mary and Jerry sat for that portrait, was

duly pictured for posterity.

Mary (Lyons) McDonald appears again on the facing page, this

time holding her first child, Genevieve, as a baby. John

McDonald appears to their right, he came to the Nunda area from

Stillwater, Minnesota as a young man In 1913, looking for work.

They farmed in the Nunda area all of their married lives, John

died In 1965 and Mary in 1971.

Shortly before the turn of the century, Margaret and Tim Kane In

Chicago decided to give in to daughter Loretta, ("Etta"), and to let

her have her picture taken In a studio in a grown up dress. Etta

stretched and posed pensively in the best gay nineties style while

the photographer and his camera hid beneath his shawl, opened

his shutter, and fired off his flash powder, capturing this delightful

Image for us. A few years later, Joe Coffey's mother, Nan,

"dressed him to the nines" and took him off to the more modern

new studio In Madison for the Hollywood- like result shown next

to Etta.

This facing page is given over to pictures of the McDonald kids at

tender ages. In 1926, Aunts and Uncles from Stillwater,

Minnesota came visiting and put two- year-old Billy on the hood

of their car for a snapshot. Earlier, Genevieve and Dickie had

faced the studio camera in Madison, and, later, Billy had a turn

there also. Still later, he was back again, this time with younger

brothers Dean and Jerry.

"

The upper half of the collage on the facing page relates to the Dahl

School, which was in the southeast corner of section 27 in Nunda

Township. Viola Overski, daughter of Olai Overski, was the teacher there

in the school year 1930-31, and had this little souvenir booklet prepared

for her students at the end of the year. The student body, shown against

the backdrop of Vlola's new Plymouth, consists of Sylvia Dahl, Milo

Stevenson, Dick McDonald, Carl Dahl, Bill McDonald, Jackie Hoidal and

Kermit Alfson. The McDonald contingent had only just arrived a few

months earlier, on moving day, March 1st, 1931. Six years later,iIn 1937,

the Dahl School student body was photographed again - Bill McDonald

(grade 8) and Jackie Hoidal (grade 7) were the only holdovers, Dean

McDonald stands with them in the back row. Flanking Dean are Jerry

McDonald and Ernest Dahl, these five had constituted the entire student

body up until March 1st, when the three Schuler brothers and the

Hagedorn boy moved in. Our teacher that year was Ann (Overski)

Webster, a younger sister to Viola.

The lower section shows a barefoot Jerry McDonald feeding a pet lamb in

1933, and his sister Genevieve with the family pony, Teddy, In 1937. Her

letter "E” represents Eastern Normal School In Madison, later renamed

"General Beadle State Teacher's College" and now known as "Dakota

State".

The remaining snapshot shows Mary Ann (Harrington) Lyons In 1938,

assembled with her six granddaughters for her 80th birthday. Typically,

the scene was moved outside for the picture, to get enough light for the

camera. Starting on the left, the roll call of granddaughters Is shown

below (married names are shown although all were single at the time).

Rita Schuster, Genevieve (McDonald) Olson, Eileen (Malland) Bearss,

Mary Ann (Lyons) Bodensteiner, June (Schuster) Rounds and Mary

(Schuster) Schnell

4. 5.

SOUVENIR

School Days

..

This final page of our family photo album gives a few glimpses into the

McDonald family as time goes on. The scenes of John mowing hay with

his favorite team were taken in 1939. The land where they work is the

same land where David Molumby and his wife, Mary (Crossgrove)

Molumby were raising their family when we looked in on them in 1887.

Mary's cousin, Kate Crossgrove, was living with them then, teaching

school, and Will Lyons was courting Kate.

As the nineteen forties came on many young men, including Jerry and

Bill, were seen in uniform, as here, Much later still, in 1979, the surviving

McDonalds were together on the occasion of the marriage of Maureen

Olson, daughter of Harry and Genevieve (McDonald) Olson, to Dick

Mumbleau. Dick had died in 1951, John in 1965 and Mary in 1971. Jerry,

Dean, Genevieve and Bill are shown here, reading left to right.

"

A PICTURE IS WORTH TEN

THOUSAND WORDS