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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.
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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.
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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.