Mago Bill: More of, who wants to know, about Mago Bill
I never met him. He was the first of my paternal grandmother's three husbands. He was born on the 26th day of August of the year 1884 in Des Moines, Iowa. In that same year the Brick and Clay Workers of America was founded on May 18th; the Ringling Brothers gave their first circus performance in Baraboo, Wisconsin; Eleanor Roosevelt was born in October; and Pope Leo the XIII condemned secular Freemasonry.
He was named Joseph Carroll Sheehan.
He married Josephine Sophia Helwick on January 16th 1907 in Chicago, Illinois. My father, Carroll Joseph Sheehan was the eldest of the four children they bore together. In the year of that marriage the English and French nations agreed on Siamese independence; William James' "Pragmatism" was published; Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scout movement; and the first daily comic strip "Mr. Mutt" is run in the San Francisco Chronicle and later became Mutt and Jeff.
Joseph Carroll was the son of Mago William Sheehan and Mary J. Carroll.
RCS