Thomas F. Mahony Papers

Thomas F. Mahony was born in 1873 in Meadville, PA. While Mahony was still young the family moved to Ashtabula, Ohio where Mahony grew up, the eldest of seven children in a devout Irish Catholic household. His father was a butcher, and young Thomas worked as a butcher’s delivery boy and store clerk. He moved to Colorado in 1902 and worked for the Grand Junction, Colorado chamber of commerce, in which capacity he supported the Chicago Tribune Land Show. He moved to Montana and spent several years as a real estate promoter. 1908 saw Mahoney back in Colorado and settled in Longmont, where he married Mattie Sullivan, a third grade teacher. They were the parents of three children.

Associated with the Equitable Life Assurance Society, Mahony was a businessman, and served as President of the Longmont Chamber of Commerce. He was chairman of Colorado Catholic Charities and the Mexican Welfare Committee, Colorado State Council, Knights of Columbus, 1920s-1930s. He became well known for his support for the migrant sugar beet workers in Colorado and other western states. Mahony worked with the Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations and the International Conference for the Protection of Migrants. Mahony died in 1957, still active in the causes to which he had devoted his life.