Gertrude Mahorney, BA 1887, MA 1889
Gertrude Amelia Mahorney is the first documented African American graduate of Butler University, because for many years the school did not track students by race (only religion). Gertrude received her Bachelor of Arts in 1887 and a Master of Arts in 1889, attending the university’s Irvington campus.
Gertrude Mahorney came from a remarkable family. She was born in Indianapolis just after the Civil War in 1866. Her father, John Todd Mahorney, was born in Pennsylvania and was an author, inventor, labor leader, politician, and social activist. He was noted as being the first African American Democrat in Indianapolis and was a founding member of the Western Association of Writers. When he died in 1890 of consumption, Butler president Allen R. Benton assisted in his burial service. Gertrude’s mother, Ann Elizabeth Mahorney, was the daughter of Jared Gray, a prosperous Chicago merchant, who was active in the antislavery National Negro Convention Movement.
Gertrude’s parents came to Indianapolis during the early years of the Civil War, and her father established an ornamental hair and wig business on Illinois Street. Gertrude was the third of four siblings, but siblings Emma and George died as children, leaving Gertrude and her younger brother, John Joseph as survivors.
Her father frequently traveled overseas, and in 1877 he took his family to England for a year of study. The Mahoney's lived in London’s East End and were exposed to people of diverse backgrounds. Upon the family’s return to Indiana, they moved to Irvington in 1879 so that Gertrude and her brother could attend Butler University.
When Gertrude graduated in 1887, she presented her essay “Two Portraits” at commencement, which compared Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Sumner, a writer whom her father had written a biography of. She was praised as one of the best speakers among the 18 in her class. Gertrude then obtained a master’s degree in 1889, the same year that her brother John obtained his bachelor’s degree. John Joseph Mahorney briefly worked as a surveyor, and sadly died following a brief illness in 1892.
Black teachers at either School No. 23 or No. 24, 1901 in Indianapolis, Indiana (from the Crispus Attucks High School Archives).
She left Indianapolis once again in September 1910 to become the lead teacher at the Ohio Street Colored School in Rockville, Indiana, which now houses the Parke County Historical Society Museum. Depending on enrollment, over the next four years, Gertrude was often the only teacher at the school.
We lose track of Gertrude in 1915, around age 50. The last known correspondence with her takes place with Butler president Thomas Carr Howe, as she was seeking assistance in selling property after her parents had passed away. The return address of Detroit, Michigan on the letter is the last piece of evidence of her whereabouts that we have.
As far as we know, she was never married and did not have any children. Her parents and three siblings are buried in Crown Hill, and there is space for her in the family plot that remains empty.
Pictured here is the headstone of her younger brother, John Joseph Mahorney, Jr.
John Jospeh Mahorney, Jr. (1871-1892) is the second recorded Black graduate of Butler University. John received his BA in philosophy in 1889 and would go on to speak at the commencement about the “Goal of Life”. This is the same year that his sister, Gertrude Amelia Mahorney, the first Black graduate of Butler University in 1887, also graduated this time with her MA.
