Mr. McKinney is a prominent blacksmith and wagonmaker in Mound City. His father,. Mathew McKinney, was born in Pennsylvania and emigrated to Ohio, where he was married to Miss Louisa Wilson, a native of Maryland. By this union there were five children born, of which George M. was the youngest. He was born in Guernsey County, Ohio, August 2, 1839, and there received the benefits of a common school education.
During the days of his youth he assisted his father, who was by occupation a blacksmith, at his trade, and later in life he became a thorough master of the business, following the same in Ohio till 1862. He then wended his way to Washington Territory, and in the fall of the same year he returned as far as Omaha, Nebraska, where he worked at the anvil for eighteen months. At the end of that time, or in the spring of 1864, he went to Nebraska City, and there resumed his chosen calling till January, 1865, when he returned to Ohio, and in September, 1866, he again started for the west.
After spending a short time in Illinois and Iowa, he located at Forest City, Holt County, Missouri, in December of that year, and in the following spring went to Richville, Missouri, where he started a shop on his own account. This he continued to carry on till September, removed it to Nebraska City, Nebraska, and there he resided till the spring of 1868, when he returned to Holt County, Missouri, carrying on business in Forest City till March, 1875. Mr. McKinney subsequently came to Mound City, and has since been the leading mechanic in his line in this place, and has met with great success.
During the war, in the year 1861, he served four months in Company H, Seventeenth Ohio Infantry. Mr. McKinney is a member of the Masonic fraternity. He was married July 2, 1837, to Mrs. Annie Thomas, a daughter of John Clark, who was a native of Indiana. Mrs. McKinney is a native of Indiana, and was born April 16, 1842. They are both members of the M. E. Church.
Source: "History of Holt and Atchison Counties, 1882" transcribed by Karyn.