Person:Mary McKean (11)

Mary Ellen McKean is described by her granddaughter Mary Davis as "a very small woman, about 5 feet tall, sprightly, with sparkly eyes." She wore a size 1 shoe, a topknot on her hair, and tiny glasses on her nose. She was a strong Christian.

She was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, about 1845 and died around 1919. She was one of 10 children. Her father, Thomas McKean, lived in Washington, Pa. A newspaper once reported by mistake that he was the Thomas McKean who signed the Declaration of Independence, and many descendants believed the story until the author of this note made the mistake of tracking the story down. He was probably related to the signer of the Declaration, who was a lawyer and politician in Delaware and Pennsylvania, but this Thomas McKean was actually a successful businessman in Washington County. He started in business as a manufacturer of tobacco and cigars. He was very active in the Second Presbyterian Church in Washington and in civic affairs.

Mary McKean married John Calvin McClintock in 1865 and they moved to Burlington, Iowa, where he was minister of the First Presbyterian Church, starting in 1871. They had four children, all red-haired boys, and all musical. They were Paul, Will, John, and Terry. Paul was a minister; John was a doctor and a professor at the University of Iowa; and Terry was a banker.

John was chairman the Department of Physiology at the University of Iowa (now the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics). He was the first chair who had been trained in the basic sciences, and a long section of a discussion of the department's history at http://www.physiology.uiowa.edu/about/history.htm is devoted to his tenure.

John Calvin McClintock was one of the committee that invited Thomas Davis Ewing to be president of Parsons College in 1880, an invitation that eventually resulted in the marriage of Paul Whiting McClintock to Rebecca Miller Ewing (the oldest child of Thomas Davis Ewing). She told a story that after the first time they met, Paul told the friend with him "That's the woman I will marry." After Paul and Rebecca married and went to China, in 1892, Mary Ellen went to visit them, early in the 1900s. She loved the trip and often talked about it later. John Calvin McClintock died in 1903 and Mary Ellen went to live with Paul and Rebecca in Laurel, Mississippi, after they returned from China in 1915. This is the period that Mary Davis remembers. Mary Ellen McKean is the source of the advice to "put everything in its final resting place" that Mary Davis has so frequently repeated to her own grandchildren.

Four McKean siblings in 1908: Annie, Mary Ellen, Bernard, and Maria

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Mary Davis (daughter of Paul Whiting McClintock and Rebecca Miller Ewing).