Maj. William McMahon

1749-1794 · Wilmington DE

Born 1749, Wilmington, Delaware

Died 1794

Children include William

William McMahon was born on 9 January 1749 at Wilmington, Delaware, by his memorial. The name was written many ways: McMahon, McMahan, McMechen and McMachen. On 21 March 1774 he married Ann Cox, called Nancy, the daughter of Isaac Cox, in Hampshire County, Virginia. Their son William Friend, known all his life as Friend, was born in Ohio County, Virginia, on the upper Ohio River, on 25 October 1776.

He served in the Revolution as a Virginia officer. A roster of Revolutionary soldiers buried in Ohio, quoted on his memorial, gives a William McMechen, also spelled McMahon, as surgeon of the 4th Virginia from 14 October 1776 and of the 3rd Virginia from June 1779. Whether that surgeon and the later major are one man is not settled.

After the war he served on the Northwest frontier, where the United States was fighting the Miami, Shawnee and Delaware nations for the Ohio country. In November 1791 the army of Arthur St. Clair was destroyed on the headwaters of the Wabash. Gen. Anthony Wayne, who succeeded St. Clair, built a stockade named Fort Recovery on the battlefield in December 1793. On 30 June 1794 a large force of warriors and British allies attacked a pack-horse convoy and its escort outside the fort. Major McMahon commanded the escort and was killed in the fighting. The fight is told in Alan D. Gaff's history of the campaign, Bayonets in the Wilderness.

He was buried at Fort Recovery, in a grave shared with a companion. The bronze plaque on the monument there reads: "While in defense of this fort Major McMahon, with a detachment of troops, gained a most complete victory for the American Army over two thousand Indians and British, on June 30th and July 1st, 1794, sustaining a loss of twenty-two officers and one hundred and twenty soldiers." His name is cut into the base of the monument.

Ann was left a widow with eight children, by the family history of 1948. William had made a will and named her his executrix, and in January 1795 she was taking up town lots at Charlestown, the present Wellsburg, in that capacity. Some of the land he left in Brooke County, Virginia, was later sold by her and her second husband, Edward Worrell, whom she married in 1797. His children went to law over it as "Friend McMahan et al., heirs at law of William McMahan, deceased," plaintiffs against Charles Prather, in the Brooke County court.

Children

William Friend McMahon 1776-1862

Sources

Brooke County, Virginia, court order book, 1801 to 1817, page 396 to 397

Fort Recovery monument, Fort Recovery Monument Park, Mercer County, Ohio; photograph on Find a Grave memorial 62289999

Brooke County, Virginia, court order book 1801 to 1817, witness allowances in Friend McMahan et al., heirs at law of William McMahan deceased, v. Charles Prather; Evelyn C. Adams, "The Coxes of Cox's Creek," Filson Club History Quarterly, volume 22 (April 1948), as abstracted in McMahan family notes, Jefferson County, Kentucky; Alan D. Gaff, Bayonets in the Wilderness (2004), pages 243 to 244; Fort Recovery monument plaque; Find a Grave memorials 62289999 and 103291070

Ohio County, Virginia, deed book 3, pages 28 to 29, as copied in Survey Land Records 1777 to 1801, Ohio and Brooke Counties, pages 304 to 305 (FamilySearch full text)

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Cite: Heirology, "Maj. William McMahon (1749-1794)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/maj-william-mcmahon-1749-1794-dcc673.