Evelyn Cecelia Mahoney

Evelyn McKernan: Married (?) Mahoney and resided at Towanda, Bradford County, Pennsylvania.  Evelyn and her husband had 3 daughters, who had children.

x. EVELYN CECELIA MCKERNAN, b. 05 Oct 1905, Albany Township, Bradford Co., PA; m. JOHN F. MAHONEY, 18 Aug 1923. Still active with an alert mind in September 2002, "Aunt" Evelyn was the confirming source for many of the picture identifications on this page. She passed away on October 31, 2006. Her obituary is posted after the following article, with accompanying picture, which tells us about her centenarian status in 2005:

The Daily Review Towanda, PA September 29, 2005

Happy at 100: Evelyn Mahoney to celebrate milestone birthday BY NANCY COLEMAN 09/29/2005 Daily Review Her blue eyes still twinkle. Why? Is it from years of playing in the hills? Or growing up in a big, loving family? Or working hard, indoors and out, to help others and make the world a little prettier, a little better for everyone? Maybe it's ... all of that. Evelyn Mahoney will turn 100 years old Oct. 5. She's healthy, and sharp. And those bright eyes are happy. Evelyn lives with her daughter and son-in-law Geraldine and Jim Herda on Bridge Street Hill, Towanda. Her vision's good, she eats and sleeps great, and she gets around with a walker. She even dries dishes for Geraldine. She's a sweet - but spunky - soul. Evelyn's crocheted intricate doilies -- and loves the TV show "Walker: Texas Ranger." White as sugar, her hair curls around her face. This afternoon, she wears a yellow shirt with bright blue flowers and her silver cross. A bird chirps outdoors. Evelyn's having fun. She's going back in time. . .. Born Oct. 5, 1905, to Luke and Lura McKernan, she lived on the family farm in Laddsburg -- with a few siblings. "There's 13 of us!" she says. She names them, oldest to youngest: Byron, Elida, Lola, Catherine, Mable, Rodney, Dessie, Mark, Mary, herself, Josephine, Joseph and Bernard. The kids were close. The older girls, for example, bought gifts for their little sisters -- once even a Flexible Flyer sled! "We were always good to each other," Evelyn says. She learned about work young. "Well, I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning, went to the barn," she says. By age 7, the little redhead was helping milk 20 cows. Her dad took the milk to the Laddsburg creamery. The Lehigh Valley train went through town, Evelyn notes. Even from the farm, "you could hear that old chug, chug, chug!" "I gathered eggs ... washed them myself. Mother raised turkeys and chickens." In the winter, her mom made chicken mash from grain and little potatoes -- unless the kids snitched them first. Evelyn skipped school to help plant potatoes. Later in the year, they dug them up. And when she got bigger, Evelyn cleaned houses and hung wallpaper with her mom. "Oh, we all had to work!" she says. "My dad done all his work with horses. We never had a tractor," she says. There was Dick and Jack and Harry. Topsy, with a star on the forehead, was the main buggy horse. "Quite a trotter!" Evelyn says. Cats and dogs? "Oh my goodness, yes!" she declares. "We always had to have cats ... or we'd have been carried away with rats!" Gypsy was her favorite dog. "She was an awful friendly dog," Evelyn says. Possibly a shepherd/collie mix, the long-haired cow dog would bark if someone came by, but she never chased him. Gypsy was nice, Evelyn insists -- "like every female!" The family had no electricity, of course. They eventually got a battery-powered radio, but not until Evelyn was 18. So the kids created simple fun. They played tag. And hide-and-seek. "We had a lot of little games," Evelyn says. They swam in the pond or creek. "Course, our boys all liked to hunt." (Sold the furs and made money, too.) "We had a pond we skated on," Evelyn says. And sledding ... oooh ... "Yes indeed! ... We could start right at our house and end up ... Jim Miller's!" she remembers. "If we wanted to pull the sled back!" she adds. "I walked two miles to school." She attended the one-room Waltman Hill School, in Wilmot Township, with up to eighth grade, but only 15 or 16 students at the most. The school had one teacher, but "they changed about every year," Evelyn says. She had Regina and Mary McDermott, as well as Mary Byron, Mary Finan and Evelyn's cousin Ralph Decker. "We had an old iron stove about that big around -- high one," she says, holding out her arms. "Those teachers had to work hard. They had to make the fire ... shake it down ... empty the ashes." They carried in drinking water from Mary Kline's spring, Evelyn says. "Everybody drank out of the same dipper." Two children shared each seat, with ink wells in the desks, and walked up front for their grade's lesson. They started off studying the Primer, then the first-grade reader. The beginning year was easy, Evelyn remembers. Just learning to read and write -- "that was the main thing," she says. "Eighth was about as hard as any for me." And those dear teachers -- "they had the patience of Job," Evelyn remarks. "They must have!" She attended high school at the Burgess Hotel in New Albany. "Wasn't a very fancy high school!" she says. The school building came later. "I never did like English," she admits. Math? Sometimes it was easy, sometimes not. But history was great! "Well, I used to like all them old fellas that created this history!" Evelyn graduated in 1922, in a class of no more than 12 - Helen and Mary Harney, Vivian Johnson, Viola Vargason, Paul Finan, Charles Shott and a few others. She went to work up in Towanda at the Elwood Whitesell drug store. And she met John. It seems John Mahoney, from Overshot, had come along to the farm with a buddy who was dating Mary. Soon, John was dating Evelyn. They went to dances. St. Agnes School held a lot, and McCarthy's in North Towanda had a "real good floor" up in the barn, Evelyn remembers. And they ate. "John was a great one to eat," Evelyn says. "He always was looking for something to eat!" This John fellow was pretty nice. "Oh, he had the softest skin!" Evelyn remembers. He shaved up nice. "Good smelling shaving lotion!" He'd put on his gray suit for dates. "He was pretty nifty-looking when he used to come out to see me!" So she married him. They had an evening wedding at St. Basil's in Dushore. Evelyn wore a white crepe dress with scallops and rosettes, and a "beautiful white sash," she says. "I made it." Carl McNamara and Mary stood up with them. Then they got together with friends and neighbors at Evelyn's house -- and ate. Mr. and Mrs. Mahoney settled into an apartment in "Mrs. Boyle's basement," Evelyn remembers, at the corner of Second and Maple in Towanda. John rode the work train to the Sayre railroad shops, "the only job he ever had," Evelyn says, and she worked at the drug store. They had at least three other homes in Towanda then finally settled on a small Luthers Mills farm. The farmhouse was old. It needed help. So Evelyn whipped it into shape. She papered. She painted. She even built a stairway. "Made it a nice home," she says. "That's where I lived till I came here. ... And I was pretty proud of that place!" In the meantime, they raised three daughters: Mary, Geraldine and Barbara. Evelyn also did house cleaning for others -- "Oh, I was always looking for work!" She had a job at Sylvania, too. John passed away at 65. So Evelyn, in her early 60s herself, kept the small farm going, milking the little herd. "I kept 'em for quite a few years." Eventually she sold all the cows but one: Dynamite. "I was even afraid of her!" Evelyn admits. "She'd switch herself around and jump over a fence the slickest of anything!" But Evelyn got by. She lived alone more than three decades, then finally moved in with Geraldine and Jim. Today, she's finally "retired." Her favorite hobby? She whispers: "Sleep!" But she likes a good TV movie now and then, plus "Walker," and sometimes reads Country or Country Extra magazine. "I eat all the time!" she claims. Two of her doilies lie on living room tables, their white threads looping themselves into designs of wheat tassels, and flower-like edges. In the past seven years, she's made 17. The family sometimes drives her on the four-wheeler to a nearby pond for a picnic. A few weeks ago, she rode into the woods and watched them cut wood. Her health tips? "I just kept on working all my life!" She drinks milk every day. But it wasn't always like that. "I milked too many cows!" she declares. That smell of steam off hot milk in the pail -- Ugh! Today, she has 11 grandchildren, plus great- and even great-great-grandkids -- don't ask her to count them all. Two of the great-greats were born this year, an even century after Evelyn. This summer, she got to know little Guiseppe -- Evelyn's daughter's son's daughter's son. She was smitten. "He's a sweet little fella!" she declares. "He's the best baby and the prettiest little fellow you ever seen!" His baptism photo shows two little blue eyes -- "His eyes are so beautiful!" Evelyn says -- light brown hair, a pudgy nose and little puckered baby lips, all wrapped up in snowy white clothes. In a later photo, she poses with him. She beams. Her strong hands -- hands that have cleaned, milked, painted, played in snow, held books, raised children, worked beside a true love -- hold the chubby-faced baby. All those things await his soft little hands. All those and more. "We just love him to death!" Evelyn declares. (Soon, the other great-great-grandchild will visit. Most likely, just maybe, it could be ... Evelyn will be smitten all over again!) Those babies have a heritage from Great-Great-Grandma. One of work and love and pride in a job well done. "Whatever I done I was proud of that it was good for anybody or anything," Evelyn says. "I always tried to do right for other people. ... Went and done work for other people just to help them out." And Evelyn has one other thing to share. .. Those twinkling blue eyes.

Daily Review Towanda, PA November 2, 2006

Evelyn C. (Cecilia) McKernan Mahoney 101, widow of John F. Mahoney of Towanda RR 3, Pa.passed away peacefully Tuesday October 31, 2006 at the Skilled Nursing Unit of Memorial Hospital, Towanda, Pa. Evelyn was born October 5, 1905 in Albany Township, Bradford County, Pa. one of 13 children of the late Luke and Lura Chapman McKernan and resided on the family farm in Laddsburg with her family. She attended the one-room Waltman Hill School in Wilmot Township through the eighth grade and graduated from high school in 1922 in a class of no more than 12 students, which was located at the Burgess Hotel in New Albany. On the evening of August 18, 1923 Evelyn married John F. Mahoney of Overshot, Pa. at St. Basil's Catholic Church in Dushore, Pa. The couple settled into a basement apartment at the corner of Second and Maple Street in Towanda. They resided in three other homes in Towanda before purchasing their farm in Luthers Mills. Evelyn was employed by Bendix Corporation in Elmira, N.Y. during the World War II years, and was later employed by Sylvania Electric in Towanda for 23 years until her retirement in 1967. She was preceded in death by her husband John on July 13, 1967. Evelyn was a member of S.S. Peter & Paul Catholic Church in Towanda and the Altar & Rosary Society there. She was also a member of the Women of the Moose, Canton Lodge No. 3183 and was a charter member of the Ladies Auxiliary, Fraternal Order of Eagles Lodge No. 1367, Towanda. Surviving are: two daughters, Geraldine Herda and her husband James Herda of Towanda RR 3, Barbara Patterson and her husband John of Towanda RR 3, 11 grandchildren, numerous great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews and cousins. In addition to her parents and husband she was preceded in death by her daughter, Mary E. Bailey and a grandson, Ronald Bailey. A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated Saturday, Nov. 4, 2006 at 10 a.m. at SS Peter & Paul Catholic Church, Third St. Towanda, Pa. Interment will follow in SS Peter & Paul Cemetery, N. Towanda Twp., Pa. The family will receive friends Friday evening from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Maryott-Bowen Funeral Home 217 York Ave. Towanda, Pa. Recitation of the Rosary will be held Friday evening at the funeral home.