Thomas Mangan and Mangen's Shamrock Social Club - Schooner Club - V.F.W. Building

Images and notes from Katie Knapp

Thomas Mangan and the Mangan's Shamrock Social Club. (Milliken Collection from Gary Milliken)

Thomas Mangan second in from the right.

Thomas Mangan sent this postcard to his sister Teresa.

The Mangans were a Catholic family from Ireland that immigrated to Cambria County, Pennsylvania where most of the men were coal miners. Thomas was born in 1880 in Staffordshire, England where the family lived for a short time before coming to the U.S. They were in PA by 1884. Two of Thomas’s sisters were nuns. Thomas and his brother James moved out to Wyoming two years before my grandmother (Mary Callaghan, daughter of ​Mary Mangan—Thomas’s sister) was born. Thomas sent this postcard to his sister, Teresa, and is the second from the right. My cousin recently found the original. As I understand it, Thomas opened the “Shamrock Social Club” and became the mayor of Elmo. He died in Sacramento, California in 1966. (Katie Knapp great-great-Niece of Thomas Mangan)

• Elmo was incorporated in 1917. Thomas Mangan was the first mayor. 

• Thomas Mangan was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1918-19 after his saloon was forced to stop alcohol sales.

• The Mangen's Shamrock Social Club later became the V.F.W. Building.

1938