Luke Monihon was born November 15, 1841, in Waddington, St. Lawrence County, New York. He was the son of James Monaghan and Ann Martin, immigrants from Ireland who had arrived in the United States between 1833 and 1837. The Monaghans were farmers.
James Davidson Monihon, Luke’s older brother, caught
‘gold fever’ in 1854 and went off to California to become a placer miner.
In 1860, Luke was working as a hired hand for a
Rutherford family, also in St. Lawrence County. No evidence has been
found that Luke himself served during the Civil War, although his brother James
enlisted in Company F, 1st California Infantry, which brought him to
Arizona in 1863. Evidently James saw potential in the Salt River
Valley and invited his brothers to join him.
Of Luke’s and James’s siblings, Joseph and Christopher also
came to Arizona. While their kin back in New York continued to spell
their surname as Monaghan, the brothers in Arizona were known as Monahans,
Monahons and, finally-- Monihons.
Luke Monihon was in Arizona by at least August 1875, when he
filed on a homestead near his brother James’s, in the new Phoenix
township. After “proving up”, he received his homestead patent in
May, 1878.
He married Sarah Elizabeth Wilcoxen, daughter of his
neighbor Andrew Jackson Willcoxen, although the marriage appears to have been
of short duration and there were no children. Sarah had been married
previously and had a son by her first husband.
On August 19, 1879, Monihon was driving home with a load of
wood when he was shot in the back by an assailant who had been lying in wait
along the road. The team of horses continued home where a ranch
hand, seeing no driver, backtracked and found Monihon’s body.
Luke Monihon is buried in City Loosley Cemetery, Block 2, Lot 6, north half. Come hear the rest of the story at the Pioneer and Military Memorial Park!
-By Donna Carr
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