Mahorney, Eleanor - disappears - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Today’s Cincinnati Enquirer contains the following concerning some well know Crawfordsville parties who are in a muddle in Cincinnati.

“The strange disappearance of a Hoosier maiden is occasioning much uneasiness in this and two or three other cities. Whether the girl has committed suicide or whether she has met a fate still more deplorable is an unsolved question. On Sunday afternoon a pretty lady called at No. 340 Kenyon Avenue and applied for board. She gave her name as Mildred Manning of Crawfordsville, Ind., and stated that she had clerked at Byram & Sullivan’s store in Indianapolis. She also said that she had understood typewriting and that her uncle had secured her a position with a lawyer. The girl was absolutely unacquainted with Cincinnati and knew no one to refer to, but her lady-like demeanor secured her lodging at the house where she applied. On Monday morning the young lady went to the depot ostensibly to get her trunk but returned saying that she had forgotten her check. In the afternoon she again went out and never returned.

The missing girl left a small valise and a portfolio at her room that revealed her identity and several other things. The valise contained some clothing, a bottle of chloroform and a bundle of papers. The portfolio was filled with letters and papers, on which the girl had begun epistles to her friends. On a small slip of paper, all scribbled over in a scrawling hand, as if it had been written in a moving car, were the words:

“You don’t like me any more, but, here the words are almost illegible, “Mamie McCarthy.”

The pitiful scrawl discloses what is probably the secret of the girl’s disappearance. In other letters it is found that her real name was Eleanor Mahoney, and that she had been on terms of something more than friendship with Louis Watson, a young railroad clerk, of 126 North Fifth Street, Lafayette, Ind. The bits of correspondence with him that were discovered run through eight or nine months. Among the first is a copy of a letter that was sent to the favored one. It began:

“December 21, 1891

Dear Louie: Did you catch your train Saturday morning? I have been wondering ever since if you got away all right. I got here about 3:10 o’clock. My uncle was at the train to meet me. It was 5 o’clock when we got out to his house. They had breakfast at 5:30 o’clock, so I did not get to sleep at all. I started to write to you last night, but could not hold my eyes open.”

The letter goes on with unimportant references to past enjoyment and future pleasures. Other partly finished letters, many of them only begun, show that Eleanor began to call Louie her “darling.” Then on July 5 three is a scribbled reference to the Fourth, and on July 12 a letter begun to Louie, in which Miss Mahoney presumes that he is angry with her but what about does not appear. This finishes the correspondence with Louie, except the pathetic scrawl, which she probably wrote half unconsciously while on her way to Cincinnati.

The Mamie McCarthy referred to lives in Crawfordsville, and several of her letters were found in the portfolio, with unfinished answers, by Miss Mahoney.

Investigation discloses the fact that the girl had no trunk at the depot. She had but $3 or $4 in her purse. From Crawfordsville it is learned that Miss Mahoney was the daughter of John Mahoney, a section hand, and that she clerked in a dry goods store there before removing to Indianapolis. She always wrote to her father every week, and on Saturday last she wrote to Mame McCarthy, her friend, telling her that she and two other girls were going to come to Cincinnati, where they were to get better positions. Louis Watson, to whom it is said Miss Mahoney was engaged, is a young man of 22, employed in Division Superintendent Stafford’s office of the Monon Railway. Young Watson lived in Crawfordsville for awhile and met Miss Mahoney there three years ago. He speaks in high terms of the girl and denies coming to Cincinnati with her.

He claims to have seen Miss Mahoney last in April, but received a letter from her on the 5th of last month.

Miss Mahoney is a girl of medium height and build, with very dark brown eyes and hair. She is full in the face, and has a blotch made by some nitrate on the left cheek. Her only jewelry was a bracelet which was probably a present from her lover. It was broken, and she took it with her Monday morning saying on her return that she had left it at Kauffman’s jewelry store, but nothing is known of her there. It is thought that Miss Mahoney has committed suicide because of the trouble with her lover, or that she has taken a step more to be regretted.

Nora Mahoney is known by nearly everyone here having been a clerk in Bischof’s Bazaar previous to going to Indianapolis. Everyone knows Louis Watson, too, and as an exemplary young man, the son of Agent Watson of the Monon.

(later issue states that Miss Mahoney was now employed as a domestic in a family home)