Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Mahlon LEVIS
In November of 1856 Levis Township was created by an order of the county board. The name was chosen to honor Mahlon and William K. Levis, brothers born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who located in the area in 1851. The Levis brothers arrived in Black River Falls about 1842 and erected a mill there and later built another at Morrison Creek, Jackson County, WI. They came to the area of Levis and ran a mill at this location for several years, until high water destroyed it, causing them to move out. William Levis then farmed in Alma Center and later kept taverns in Hixton, Trempealeau, and Osseo, WI. He purchased acreage 1-½ miles north of Osseo in 1867 that he developed into a fine 360-acre farm. William died at Osseo in 1897, brother Mahlon ventured to California in the 1870's. The first town meeting in Levis was held at the mouth of Wedge's Creek. Originally Levis Township contained all of Dewhurst, Washburn, and Sherwood Townships. It was left with its present boundaries in 1901.
Mahlon Levis, born February 29, 1824 in Bristol, Pennsylvania. Probably the most colorful child of the family, they have described him as the black sheep and a maybe a woman chaser. He came to Alton with the other brothers in the late 1830's. In 1842 he followed his brothers to Black River. In 1849 it is said that he jumped on a ship to California, going around the Horn and earning his passage as a cook. He probably took a steamboat down to New Orleans and caught a clipper from there. He doesn't show up anywhere in the 1850 Census. But in 1853 he married Maria Olden back in Alton, Illinois. Information on her parents has not been found yet, but they came from England to Canada, where Maria was born, and then ended up in Alton. They moved back to John's town of New Denamora, and had their first child there in 1855. Around 1873 Mahlon took the family back out to California where he settled in Tulare County to raise sheep. After four years of sheep herding he lost his whole flock to drought and relocated outside of Selma in Fresno County in 1877. Here he became successful as a farmer. A year after his wife died in 1903, he remarried to the neighboring widow, Lovie Berry. Most all of Mahlon's descendents stayed in California except some descendents of his first daughter, Emma, who came back to Wisconsin. Notables here include the poet Larry Levis.
He was one of seven sons, all reared on the home farm. In 1838, when his father died, the family scattered, and Mahlon went to Illinois. With three of his brothers, in 1842, he engaged in the lumber business in the pine woods of Wisconsin, remaining there several years In 1849, with the other gold hunters, he came to California, and for two years tried his luck in the mining districts of this coast. He was unsuccessful, however, and returned to Wisconsin, where he lived for a period of eighteen years, giving his attention to the lumber business.
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