~ Boyhood ~
It is remarkable that a little interior
county of Ohio should have produced two such extraordinary
characters in the line of heroism as Philip Henry Sheridan and
Januarius Aloysius MacGahan. Both were of Irish stock and both of
Catholic birth and training.
MacGahan was born June 12, 1844, on the Logan Road, about
three miles south of New Lexington, on what is known as Pigeon
roost ridge. His father was James MacGahan, a native of County
Derry, Ireland, and his mother, Ester Dempsey, of mixed Irish and
German stock. They were married in St. Patrick's Church, in 1840,
and settled on a little farm near by. When MacGahan was 6 years
old his father died, leaving the widow in straitened
circumstances. But she had a dower interest in the farm, and
managed by struggling to get along with her little flock, in her
little cabin nestled among the hills and almost surrounded by an
unbroken forest.
MacGahan, as a boy in the district school, was far ahead in
his studies, and he is spoken of as the mildest-mannered boy of
the school and neighborhood -- almost feminine and girlish in his
ways and manners. He read all the books in the house and
neighborhood, and when a boy of about 12 got hold of Dick's works
-- a great acquisition. Then, at night, he often wandered about,
studying and locating and naming the stars, as described by Dick;
also, would frequently rise in the morning, before daybreak, to
see and locate the stars and planets not visible in the early
part of the night.
When about 14 years old he began working on farms in Hocking,
Fairfield and Fayette counties, returning winters with the money
he had thus earned to Pigeon roost to attend school.
