Through time stories have been told of the famous and the infamous. Most of these tales have been told to American children from a Eurocentric point of view of the great and not so great men with a sprinkling of women thrown in along with the rare non-European. Growing up in the fifties, I read the Childhood of Famous Americans series published by Indianapolis based Bobbs-Merrill Co. At that time, the titles included Abe Lincoln: Frontier Boy; Ben Franklin, Young Printer; and Daniel Boone: Boy Hunter. Women were represented with Abigail Adams: A Girl of Colonial Days; Amelia Earhart: Kansas Girl; and Julia Ward Howe: Girl of Old New York. Of the 53 books in the series that could be found at L. S. Ayres & Co for Christmas gifts in 1950, two volumes, Bird Girl: Sacagawea and Pocahontas: Brave Girl, represented native Americans and two volumes, George Carver: Boy Scientist and Booker T. Washington: Ambitious Boy, represented African Americans. Thankfully, in recent years more minority titles have been added to this series while many more stories are waiting to be found.
About fifteen years ago I came across an extraordinary Indianapolis African American of years gone by, and while no book will probably ever be written of him, a volume might be titled John Todd Mahorney: Orator for Social Justice.
Born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania on October 27, 1829, John Todd Mahorney became a noted African American author, inventor, labor leader, politician, and social activist. He spent most of his formative years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and following the completion of his education he spent four years apprenticed as a bricklayer before taking up that profession. In the late 1850s he became active in the Colored Citizens’ Convention movement where he met his wife Ann Elizabeth Gray, the daughter of prosperous Chicago ornamental hair and wig merchant and convention officer Jared Gray. In addition to abolition, the conventions promoted public education for black children.
Mahorney and Elizabeth Gray were married in Chicago on July 23, 1859, and the couple would eventually become the parents of Emma E. Mahorney, George E. Mahorney, Gertrude “Gertie” Amelia Mahorney, and John Joseph Mahorney. After learning the ornamental hair and wig business from his father-in-law, Mahorney came to Indianapolis in the early years of the Civil War, establishing his business at 28 N. Illinois St near the Bates Hotel. For a time, he lived at the shop with his wife, who helped with the business, before relocating to 55 S. Illinois St and making his home on the west side of the city at 235 N. Blake St. Mahorney also dabbled in the real estate business. Tragically, two of his children, Emma and George, died in the final year of the war and were buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.
With his business established, Mahorney returned to social activism. He was elected corresponding secretary at the 1866 State Convention of Colored Men and named Indiana’s delegate to the National Equal Rights Colored Convention that was held in Washington, DC in January 1867. At the 1869 State Convention of Colored Men, Mahorney steadfastly advocated for the adoption of a resolution calling for “securing a uniform share of the common school fund” for the education of Indiana’s black children and was one of three appointed “to travel in the different parts of this State and inform our people upon the subject of Common Schools.” The following year, he was one of the four visitors appointed to the Indianapolis Colored Public School.
Recognized as “a man of more than ordinary intelligence,” standing five feet, nine inches, with a broad face and sporting a mustache and goatee, Mahorney was a fluent speaker featured at gatherings in Indianapolis and Evansville to celebrate the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. He was a member of the Indianapolis committee organized to celebrate the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and was also invited to speak at the ratification celebration in Princeton, Indiana. While most African American men identified with the Republican Party, Mahorney was a man of conviction and was the first African American in Marion County, and possibly the state of Indiana, to become active in local Democratic politics. He was a candidate for office on several occasions, served a term as a director of the county library, and held various patronage jobs in the ‘70s and ‘80s – turnkey at the city prison, watchman at the Deaf & Dumb Institute, and night watchman at the State Library Building. Mahorney was also the first African American man in Marion County to serve as a member of the regular panel of the superior court. In addition to his continuing participation in the Colored Men’s Conventions at the state and national level, Mahorney was also active in the labor movement. When African Americans were admitted to the Knights of Labor, he organized the first African American Knights of Labor, Troutman Assembly, in Indianapolis.
Mahorney was a reader, a “thinker,” and an inventor, holding several patents. He traveled to England in the late summer of 1877 to introduce a switching frog to British railroaders. On this trip he took his family, and they lived in London’s East End. After three months abroad, the Mahorneys returned to the United States on the R.M.S. China and took up residence in Irvington. Holding advanced ideas on education, Mahorney located his home in the Classic Suburb so that his children, Gertrude A. and John Joseph Mahorney, could attend Butler University. A proficient writer, Mahorney authored, from his personal acquaintances, Hon. Charles Sumner & His Associates. In 1886 he joined Hoosier writers James Whitcomb Riley, Mary H. Catherwood, and others at the initial meeting in Indianapolis of the Western Association of Writers. John Todd Mahorney died on the morning of Wednesday, June 24, 1890, at his Irvington home of consumption. All of the Indianapolis newspapers carried his obituary, and Rev. Brazillia M. Blount, president of the Butler University board of directors, assisted by Allen R. Benton, president of Butler University, conducted the funeral service with burial following in Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis. Marhorney was a man of “unusual strength of character…esteemed for his intelligence and integrity.” His estate was estimated to be worth $30,000 (2020: $876,326).
