130th wedding anniversary
For members of the McMahan family
Charles McMahan and Elizabeth Leora Hileman were married exactly 130 years ago today, on June 6, 1895.
These are Gary’s great-great-grandparents, paternal ancestors of his maternal grandmother, Carolyn McMahan.
Charles McMahan was born in June of 1874 in Ohio; he was the youngest of eight children. He actually spent much of his childhood in a town on the Ohio River in Pennsylvania, but moved back across the river as a young adult.
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Leora Hileman was born in January of 1874 in Ohio; she was the youngest of four children. She spent her entire childhood and early adulthood in the same area, on the far east side of the state. She had her first child when she was just 17, a son named William Davis (after his father). It isn’t clear at this time whether she and her first son’s father ever married, but in any case she was a young single mother by the time she met Charles.
Charlies and Lizzie were married by Rev. William B. Roller, a Lutheran circuit minister in Columbiana County, Ohio. They were both 21 years old.
Charles and Lizzie would go on to have three children together: Sarah, Nora, and Charles Ira. Charles worked as a laborer and a teamster to support the family, while Lizzie was a homemaker. They would spend their entire married lives together in northeast Ohio, among Columbiana, Mahoning, and Stark counties (eventually ending up in the city of Alliance).
Although it is no longer possible to know the most intimate details of their lives, we can hope that these ancestors were content in their union and satisfied with the lives that they built together — or at least that they were able to find some joy in the time that each of them had with their children, extended family, and friends.
Happy 130th, Charles and Lizzie.