History of New Lexington, (Perry County) Ohio United States of America

Our database does not include an historic photo for New Lexington, (Perry County) Ohio, do you have one you would like to contribute? Contact Us!

Januarius Aloysius Macgahan, journalist, was born near New Lexington, Ohio, June 12, 1844. After his father's death in 1851, he began to work upon the farm and attend the public school. He removed to Huntington, Ill., where he taught school, 1860-62, and engaged as a bookkeeper there, 1862-64, and in St. Louis, Mo., 1864-68. During this time he studied law, contributed to the Huntington Democrat, and gave public readings from Charles Dickens. He visited London and Paris and took up the study of civil and international law in Belgium in 1869; was war correspondent of the New York Herald in the Franco-Prussian war, 1870-71, and in Paris, as the only foreign correspondent there, during the occupation of Paris by the German troops. While there his intimacy with Dombrovsky and other communist leaders caused his arrest by the French government, but he was released through the influence of U.S. Minister Elihu B. Washburne. He visited southern Russia in 1871, and was the St. Petersburg correspondent of the New York Herald, 1871-72. He reported the proceedings of the Geneva tribunal of arbitration, December, 1871, and travelled through Caucasus with Gen. William T. Sherman, 1872. He was married in January, 1873, to a Russian lady of rank, was ordered to join the expedition against Khiva by the Herald in 1873, and upon being refused permission by the Russian government, he travelled alone over the Central Asian desert, overtook the Russian army before Khiva, witnessed the fall of the city, and gained the friendship of Col. Skobeleff. He reported the operations of the Carlist insurrectionists in Spain, 1874-75, was captured during the campaign by the imperial authorities while wearing a Carlist uniform, and was sentenced to be shot, but claiming American citizenship, was saved through the American consul-general. He accompanied the expedition of Sir Allan Young to the Polar seas, in June, 1875, and in June, 1876, received a special commission from the London Daily News to investigate alleged Turkish barbarities in Bulgaria. His reports brought about Russian armed intervention, and when he returned with the Russian army, men, women and children kissed his bridle, spurs and even the horse he rode, and regarded him as their deliverer. He reported the conferences of the foreign ambassadors in Constantinople in the following winter. He accompanied the Russian army from the capture of Shipka Pass, in July, 1877, to the peace of San Stefano, concluded in March, 1878, and while the negotiations of peace were proceeding he remained at Pera, to nurse a friend ill with typhus fever, and fell a victim to the disease. He was buried at Scutari, Turkey in Asia, and the body was afterward removed to New Lexington, Ohio. Masses are said in every Bulgarian church for the repose of his soul on each recurring anniversary of his death. He is the author of: Campaigning on the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva (1874); Under the Northern Lights (1876); and Turkish Atrocities in Bulgaria (1876). He died in Pera, Turkey, June 9, 1878.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of New Lexington, (Perry County) Ohio

Biographies: