Mary Alice was the fifth and youngest child of Murtha and Catherine (Nolan) Whelan. She lived most of her childhood at Hudson, Wisconsin, and was three years old when her father died there in January, 1870. A year and a half later, her mother was remarried, to a widower, John Hughes, also of Hudson.

The Whelan-Hughes family consisted of nine children, including two Marys, the other being Mary Ann Hughes, 3 years older.

Mary Alice was 11 years old when she moved by covered wagon with her family to the Tamarac River in Marshall County, Minnesota, arriving there on May 15, 1878. They settled first in Wanger Township (yet unorganized) along the banks of the river and lived there until fall when they moved to what later became the town of Stephen. There on the south bank of the Tamarac, the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba R.R. Company had built a "Section House" to accommodate the men who were to keep the track in repair. Mary's step-father, John Hughes, was hired tomaintain the house so the family moved into it.

In 1880,soon after the turn of the new year, Mary was one of the pupils in attendance when Marshall County's first session of school began. She took her place with about a dozen young settlers, in the main room of the section House, perhaps on the benches around the big table where the family and the railroad workers ate their meals. Each of the children was equipped with whatever books were brought with them from their previous schooling elsewhere. Some of the other pupils enrolled in that first class were: Mary's step-brother, John Hughes Jr.; James and Julia Bills, children of Morgan Bills; Bert and Minnie Blivens, children of Joe Blivens; and George McCullough, son of Mike McCullough (he was known as "Tamarac Mac", the first settler in the territory).

Mary's step-sister, Mary Ann Hughes, now a young lady of 16 years, and the proud possessor

of a brand new teachers certificate, took her place in front of the class and school began. The term was of six weeks duration.

Not many years later, after she reached her sixteenth birthday, Mary Whalen herself became a teacher. She taught at what was known as the Wanger School. This was in 1883 or 1884. Her career as a teacher was short-lived, however. Mary died of pneumonia on August 28, 1884. She was 17 years, 8 months and 13 days old. Her sorrowing family laid her to rest in a private burial plot on her older sister Maggie's farm, on the S.E. 1/4 of Section 8 in Sinnott Township, and planted a clump of white lilacs to mark her grave.
WHALEN INDEX FAMILY HISTORY

STELLAR COMPUTER CONSUTING
HAVRE, MONTANA