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created a financial opportunity he could not ignore.
    Patrick J. Mullen and Mary Ann Dobshire Mullen had seven sons and five daughters; two of the sons, however, died in infancy. Patrick put every piece of money he could spare into purchasing more land. As soon as he had a son old enough to drive a team of horses, he would buy more acres for that son to work. Gene Mullen’s father, Oscar L. Mullen, was born on July 29, 1880. John Dobshire died when Gene’s father was six years old.
    At his death Dobshire left his 120-acre homestead to his wife, Ellen who in turn deeded it over to their daughter, Mary Ann, on the condition that she “agree to support and maintain said Ellen Dobshire during her natural life and furnish her with proper food, suitable clothing, proper attention and medical care during sickness, and pay all funeral expenses after her death.” If Mary Ann should prove willing, then “this land shall stand as security for the faithful performance of said contract.”
    John Dobshire was buried in the small Catholic cemetery at Eagle Center on Section 15, about five miles southwest of his farm. Andrew Jackson, himself the son of Irish immigrants, had been President of the United States when John Dobshire emigrated to America; Grover Cleveland was President when Dobshire died. While John Dobshire had gone about his daily chores, the first oil wells at Titusville were dug. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow set fire to Chicago’s heart. General Custer was massacred at the Little Bighorn. Thomas Edison invented the electric light, Alexander Graham Bell the telephone. Four major railroads now crossed the Iowa prairies; New York to San Francisco was but a seven-day trip. John Dobshire lived long enough to see the “Far West” he had helped settle become but a passing glance out the window of a transcontinental train. After the funeral Ellen Dobshire moved into her daughter and son-in-law’s new house.
    Patrick J. Mullen had become one of the most successful farmers in Black Hawk County, land-rich enough to provide each of his five sons with his own driving team. The new two-story frame house, built to shelter his growing family, was on a slight hill about a mile south of his original quarry homestead near one of the loops of Miller’s Creek. By 1910 Patrick J. Mullen owned more than 1,000 acres in Black Hawk County and an additional 640 acres in Palo Alto County 180 miles to the northwest.
    Northwest Iowa was still open range, and during the summers some of Patrick’s sons would load their father’s purebred Herefords onto the railroad cars at Waterloo and travel with them to Fort Dodge. There the boys would unload the cattle and drive them north to Emmetsburg, where the livestock would remain all summer fattening up on Patrick Mullen’s grazing land. Patrick’s other sons would meanwhile be tending the Black Hawk County farmlands, one-third of which would be in row corn, one-third in wheat and the remaining third resting up as pastureland. The quarry continued in operation, and in addition to the Herefords, Patrick raised Percheron horses for sale to the Chicago breweries and never had fewer than seventy draft and driving horses in his huge new L-shaped barn.
    Oscar L. Mullen and Margaret McDermott, Gene’s mother and father, were married at Blessing, Iowa, on February 12, 1908. By 1910 Gene’s father was listed as the manager of his father’s Grand Hereford Stock Farm, and Gene’s mother, had already become involved in local Democratic politics—an activity which would remain the consuming interest of her life. Oscar’s older brother, L. G. Mullen, managed their father’s Miller Creek Stock Farm which adjoined the Grand Hereford farm in Section 18’s northwest corner. Patrick’s oldest son had become a lawyer; the two youngest still worked in the fields.
    Although Patrick Mullen had retired at the turn of the century, he retained