My Genealogy Hound

JOHN McCALLEN, farmer and dairyman, Sewickley, was born Nov. 21, 1825, in County Armagh, Ireland, son of William and Elizabeth (Walker) McCallen. The father immigrated to America in 1826, when John was about six months old, leaving him and his mother in Ireland. William McCallen remained in America until the autumn of 1830, when he returned to Ireland, and in the following spring, 1831, he brought his wife and son to America, and they located in Mercer, Mercer county, Pa., until the spring of 1847, in which year the family, then composed of the parents and seven children, removed, with the exception of our subject, to Allegheny City, Pa. During their stay about Mercer they followed farming most of the time. In the winter of 1845 the subject of this memoir got a situation as clerk in the store of Messrs. Lyon & Mix, in Mercer, who afterward went into the blast-furnace business, and Mr. McCallen remained with them until they wound up the concern in 1848, when he removed to Allegheny City and joined the rest of the family. For a number of years he clerked in some of the leading stores of Allegheny and Pittsburgh. In 1855 he was married to Miss Amanda Workman, of Allegheny City, who died in the autumn of 1865, leaving five children, viz.: Jennie, Alice, Frank, Amanda, Maria and Cora. Mr. McCallen married for his second wife, in 1869, Miss Annie J. McConway, and then removed to Sewickley, still retaining his position at clerking in Pittsburgh. During his residence in Sewickley he was several years a member of council and always an active member and officer of the M. E. Church of Sewickley, as well as the Sunday-school. In 1885 Mr. McCallen purchased a farm of eighty-five acres in Aleppo township, about one and a half miles from Sewickley, and engaged in farming and dairying. He has in the past years been called to mourn the death of three of his children, viz.: Amanda, Maria (by his first wife), and Sadie and Edith Isabel (the two children by his present wife), and now has but four of his children living, two married and two single. His cousin, William McCallin, is the present mayor of Pittsburgh.