Flat River Girl
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-11-19

Day 246 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

Sandburg writes: "A member of the Great Lakes Seamen's Union sang this for me at the Union headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when I was marine editor of a newspaper. Later I found the same tune going to a prison song, Cousin Nellie, and to part of the cowboy song, When The Work's All Done This Fall. . .

"Rickaby gives four texts and tunes to this piece, one old timer saying the Flat River flows through Greenville, Michigan, and "Jack Haggerty was a lumberjack and from a man who used to run a livery stable and rent him horses I learned that he was not quite so rough as most of those birds, and was a little more dressy.""

ADDITIONAL NOTE: In 1872 Anna Tucker was the belle of Greenville, Michigan, a town "almost on the banks of the Flat River." Her fiancé, George Mercer, was made foreman of the lumber camp where Jack Haggerty and Dan McGinnis worked. Jealous that such a young man had been placed over him, Dan composed this ballad. He used Jack's name in it, although "Anna had never paid any special attention to Haggerty." Furthermore, "McGinnis did not know Anna Tucker but knew that she was Mercer's fiancée and used this song as a means of hurting him." (from the Traditional Ballad Index)