Masonry Magazine March 2009 Page. 50
MY MASONRY LIFE STORY
TOM MAHANY:
Worldly Influences
Shape
a Mason
It IS DIFFICULT TO TELL the story of how Tom Mahany became a stonemason without first telling the story of his heritage. Mahany actually descended from a family famous for its medieval fortresses in southwestern Ireland. His great-great grandfather, Cain O'Mahony, emigrated from Ireland in 1837, having boarded one of the "coffin ships" bound for Canada laden with Irish peasants hoping for fertile land and a free existence. O'Mahony eventually settled on the upper reaches of the River de Chute, a tributary of the St. John's River about 150 miles north of its mouth. Believing he was still in Canada, he built a substantial cabin with a grand stone chimney on the banks of the "Chute". At that time in the late-1850s, a team of international surveyors came through his land, officially establishing the boarder between the United States and Canada. His home and most all of the cleared land were on the American side in northern Maine.
In 1864, as a member of the Union Army, O'Mahony was wounded at the Tom Maharry is shown, center. Battle of the Crater outside Petersburg. Nevertheless, he returned home safely, using his enlistment bonus to advance the welfare of his children. He built a new house, cleared more land and started raising potatoes commercially a family business that remains prosperous to this day, although it has mostly moved to western New York.
As the Mahanys (the spelling is now Americanized) were establishing their potato farms in northern Maine, other Irish immigrants were pouring into New York City and migrating up the Hudson Valley. With the sidewalks in New York City still being made of wood in the mid-19th century, it wasn't long before the Irish were bringing Bluestone down out of the Catskills. The site of the first quarries was the Ashokan Valley not far from the present day town of Woodstock.