....McGaheysville is located eleven miles east of Harrisonburg on the Stanardsville turnpike, and on "Stony Run," appropriately named, which has its source between the main longitudinal ranges of the Massanutten mountain, locally called "The Kettle," and flows through the center of the village, and, two miles below, empties into the Shenandoah River.
....This village is, as the Irishman said of his pig, "Little, but ould."
....Its name dates from 1801 when the first postoffice was established there with Tobis Randolph McGahey as Postmaster, for whom the village was named.
....Among the first, if not the first to settle there, was Thos. Mauzy, (the eldest son of Henry Mauzy of Fauquier Co., Va., by his second marriage,) who settled there in the latter part of the 18th century, and owned the property which he sold in 1805 to his youngest brother Joseph, where the latter did business and reared his family and lived till his death in December, 1863, and where his son Richard now resides, having been owned by the Mauzys for 115 years consecutively.
....Thos. Mauzy also owned the farm and mill on the Shenandoah River where the Harrisonburg Electric plant is now located, which he sold in 1822.
.... Though the population has increased slowly with time, the number and variety of industries have decreased, owing to the combination of capital and to the establishment of factories which made private enterprises unprofitable.
....About 75 years ago there were in the village several tailor shops, shoemaker shops, cabinet and carpenter shops, hatter shops, wheel-wright-shop, blacksmith shops, a tannery, and one store of general merchandise.
....The following are the names of some of the citizens who lived there about that time:
....Dr. Darwin Bashaw, Dr. Hitt, Joseph Mauzy, Christopher Wetzel, Peter Bolinger, A.J.O. Bader, Philip Rimel, John Garrett, John and Jacob Leap, Solomon and Jacob Pirkey, John and Augustus Shumate, Zebulon and David Gilmore, David Irick, Allison Breeden, Jacob Fultz, and Geo. Brill.
....The following with reference to the man for whom the village was named, furnished by his granddaughter, Miss Alice McGahey, will be of interest:
....Tobias Randolph McGahey was born in Dover, Delaware, March 24, 1765. He came to this valley with a Scotch-Irish colony when a young man. In 1801, when a postoffice was established there, he was appointed postmaster, and the office was called McGaheysville. In 1802 he married Mrs. Eva Conrad, a wealthy widow of one of the first settlers in the Valley, and a resident of McGaheysville. They remained 19 years at this place, when his wife died.
....His occupation, when he first came to the Valley, was surveying. He also built flouring mills in Shenandoah, Page, Rockingham, and Augusta counties, and afterwards, in 1827, engaged in the mercantile business at Bonny Brook, on a farm he owned there, one mile northeast of McGaheysville.
....His mother (Mrs. Barnes) was a notable character in the village. She taught school, and not only taught the girls to read, write, and cipher, but to sew, knit, and paint. She lived to an old age and did much good in her journey of life.
....During his first wife’s time, Mr. McGahey lived where A.S. Bader now resides, and reared three nieces and two nephews.
