GEORGE McLENON

The beautiful Emerald Isle has furnished to the United States thousands of her best Protestant sons and daughters and among these is numbered the gentleman whose name heads this sketch. His birth occurred in the vicinity of the city of Belfast, Ireland, July 3, 1850, and he was a small boy when he was brought to this country. He is a son of Henry McLenon, of whom mention is made elsewhere in this volume. In his boyhood he attended the public schools and at an early age his judicious father began training him in the duties of the agriculturist. and ere he had reached maturity he was fully competent to manage a farm. After his marriage he settled upon a tract of eighty acres of wild land and, aided by his wife, he has prospered in his undertakings. When he had reduced his land to the proper condition for cultivation he proceeded to improve the place, and in the course of time was enabled to add to his original purchase other property adjoining it. At this writing he owns four hundred acres, on which abundant crops are raised each season. The commodious house and barns, the fine orchard and groves all add materially to the beauty and desirability of the homestead, which is considered to be one of the most valuable in the neighborhood, -- in the county, in fact. Keeping a large number of houses and other live stock, Mr. McLenon feeds all of the grain and hay raised on his farm and derives a good income from the cattle and hogs which he sells annually.

The marriage of Mr. McLenon and Jennie M. Glenn, of this township, took place in 1881. She was born in Pennsylvania and is the only daughter of A. W. Glenn, one of the respected early settlers in Atchison county. He and his estimable wife, who was Miss Maggie Murray in her girlhood, reside in Holton. Jackson county, Kansas. They have four sons, all of whom are successful young men with bright prospects before them.

The two sons of Mr. McLenon, Henry Alexander and William Neal, aged eighteen and fifteen years, respectively, are of much assistance to him in the general work of his large farm. In accordance with their parents' earnest wishes they are paying strict attention to the task of gaining a liberal education and this, together with their systematic home training, will render them competent to enter upon the battle of life and to win the same measure of success which has crowned their father's efforts. For twenty-two years the senior McLenon has served as a member of the local school board, a fact which eloquently tells of the deep interest he feels in the education of the young. Politically he is a Republican and socially he belongs to the Modern Woodmen of America. With his wife and sons he attends the Presbyterian church at Lancaster. He is an elder and is an active and valued worker in the Sunday school. Briefly, it may be said, and truly, that he occupies a position in the community that could not easily be filled, for his influence and means are ever on the side of morality and everything which is of permanent benefit to his fellow men.