Representative John Mahin View All Years

JOHN MAHIN was born at Noblesville, Indiana, December 8, 1833, and died at his home in Chicago, Illinois, July 24, 1919. Burial was at Muscatine, Iowa. He was brought by his parents to Effingham County, Illinois, in 1837, and to Bloomington (afterwards called Muscatine), Iowa, in 1843. In 1844 they removed to a farm near Rochester, Cedar County, remaining there until 1847, when they returned to Bloomington. He was then apprenticed to Stout & Israel, editors and publishers of the Bloomington Herald. About a year thereafter this firm failed financially, but young Mahin remained in the office when new proprietors assumed control, and was so advanced that he did much of the writing for the paper. In 1852 the Mahins, father and son, bought the paper, then called the Journal, and John at nineteen years old, was installed as editor, a position which he retained for fifty years, excepting about one year, in 1855, when he was attending Ohio Weslayan University at Delaware, O. Because of serious illness he had to give up his much cherished desire to secure a college education. After returning from Ohio Wesleyan and resuming his editorial work he soon attained prominence. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him postmaster at Muscatine which position he retained until 1869. That fall he was elected representative and served in the Thirteenth General Assembly. In 1873 President Grant appointed him postmaster and he served until 1878. In 1888 he was nominated by the Republicans for railroad commissioner, but was defeated by Peter A. Dey. In his editorial work he uniformly, courageously and with ability opposed the liquor business and advocated prohibition. Being a leader he incurred the enmity of some of the liquor men. On the night of May 10, 1893, his home was dynamited and wrecked, and he and his wife and children escaped as if by miracle. But not even this dastardly deed served to swerve him from the course into which his judgment and conscience had directed him. In 1903 he retired from the editorship of the Journal. A short time before this he had been appointed a postoffice inspector and in April 1905, he removed to Evanston, Illinois, that he might be near his children, and continued for a few years his work for the post office department, but several of the later years of his life he spent in happy retirement. During the more than fifty years of active life in Muscatine he was a real leader in his city and state. He was secretary and manager of the Soldiers’ Monument Association of Muscatine County which erected the beautiful monument in the court house square. He was active in every good cause. He was a prominent lay member of the Methodist Episcopal church and was a delegate from the Iowa Conference to the general conferences at Baltimore in 1876, at New York in 1888 and at Los Angeles in 1904. He attained eminence as an editor. At the time of his retirement he was recognized as Iowa’s veteran editor. At one time he was honored with the presidency of the Iowa Press Association. As a writer he made no effort at brilliancy nor claim to unusual talent. He even said what he wrote he had to “pound out.” But he had a clear, logical, common­sense and forceful style. His earnestness, enthusiasm and intenseness, his uncompromising steadfastness of purpose, his personal integrity and high character, made or him a positive power in shaping the opinion of the state.