Januarius Aloysius MacGahan

Background

Januarius Aloysius MacGahan was the son of James and Esther (Dempsey) MacGahan, both of Irish descent. He was born on June 12, 1844, in Perry County, Ohio, on a small farm near the home of his cousin, Philip Sheridan.

Education

During Januarius's boyhood, his father died, but the widowed mother managed to keep her children in school for some years, and after a period in St. Louis as a book-keeper MacGahan resolved to go abroad to improve his general education and to continue his study of law.

Career

MacGahan lived in Brussels, in Paris, and in Germany, acquiring several languages, and on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, he obtained, partly through the influence of General Sheridan, an appointment as a special correspondent for the New York Herald.

At once his adventurous disposition and his facility as a vivid descriptive writer with an eye for drama manifested themselves. He had found his vocation. He followed the campaign of General Bourbaki, returned to Paris in time to witness the opening of the Commune, was imprisoned by the Versailles troops and released through the efforts of the American minister.

In the course of the next eight years, he saw service in places widely distant from each other. During a summer in the Crimea, he became a favorite with the Czar's court and conceived a warm liking for Russia. He "covered" the Caucasus expedition of General Sherman (1872) and the sittings of the Alabama Claims tribunal at Geneva.

There followed his ride into the desert of Central Asia (1873), which, according to Eugene Schuyler, the American secretary of legation at St. Petersburg, was "spoken of everywhere as by far the most wonderful thing that ever had been done there". He defied the Russian embargo on newspapermen to find the expedition sent out under General Kauffmann to reduce the Khanate of Khiva. Cossacks pursued him almost a thousand miles.

After twenty-nine days, with two attendants who could not understand his language, sometimes forced to wade to his knees in the sand and several times "lost, " he reached the camp. As an American he was allowed to stay; as a molodyetz, a hero, he instantly became popular. With the army, he remained through the campaign against Khiva and the war with the Turkomans.

At Khiva, he met General Skobelev and they became affectionate friends. Later in the same year, he reported the Virginius complications in Cuba; after that, the Carlist campaign in the Pyrenees (1874); and then, the expedition to the Arctic of the barque Pandora (1875) promoted by the younger James Gordon Bennett.

Back in London, he found the Eastern Question the absorbing subject of the day. Rumors of the bashi-bazouk massacres in Bulgaria filtered through Europe. The opportunity for MacGahan's greatest service came when the Daily News sent him to make an independent investigation and write the exact truth.

His Bulgarian letters of July and August 1876, wrought a great change in British sentiment and did much to produce the political reaction which made war inevitable between Russia and Turkey. Since that war gave Bulgaria her independence, he came to be known in that country as "the Liberator. "

For his London paper, he followed the campaign, much of the time as a comrade of Skobelev, rendering distinguished service even when almost fully disabled. After the fall of Plevna, he went to Constantinople to nurse Francis Vinton Greene through typhoid, only himself to fall a victim to typhus. The burial was at Pera, with Skobelev as a mourner.

In 1884, on the initiative of the General Assembly of his native state, his body was brought to America on a United States cruiser. A monument now marks his grave near New Lexington, to which the Bulgarian envoys at Washington make ceremonial visits at times.

Achievements

• MacGahan was very popular among his fellow correspondents and with army officers, who respected him both for his personal qualities and his professional abilities. His most important writings appeared in book form as follows: Campaigning on the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva (1874); Under the Northern Lights (1876), on the cruise of the Pandora; The Turkish Atrocities in Bulgaria (1876), and articles in War Correspondence of the Daily News. MacGahan is still remembered in Bulgaria for his role in winning Bulgarian independence. A street and a school in the capital, Sofia, a square in the city of Plovdiv, streets in the towns of Varna, Sliven, Vratsa, Montana, Panagyurishte, Pazardzhik and Stamboliyski are named after Januarius MacGahan. There is also a festival and memorial service held each June in his honor in his hometown of New Lexington.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Campaigning on the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva

    (This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 18...)

  • The war correspondence

    (The war correspondence is an unchanged, high-quality repr...)

  • The Turkish Atrocities In Bulgaria: Letters Of The Special Commissioner Of The Daily News, J. A. Macgahan (1876)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Under the Northern Lights. With illustrations by G. R. De Wilde.

    ( Title: Under the Northern Lights ... With illustrations...)

Connections

At Yalta, MacGahan had met Barbara Nicholavna Elagin, of an ancient Russian family, whom he married in Paris in 1872. They had one son.

Father:

James MacGahan

Mother:

Esther (Dempsey) MacGahan

Wife:

Barbara Nicholavna Elagin

1852-1904 Was a Russian-American Journalist and Novelist.

References

• Souvenirs of Some Continents. London-1894
• Famous War Correspondents (American Newspapermen 1790-1933)
• Januarius Macgahan: The Life and Campaigns of an American War Correspondent