Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-04-19
M'GINTY DEAD.
The Sure Enough John McGinty Expires
at COhoes, N. Y, Aged Seventy
one Years.
He Married Three Women Who Were Grand.
mother, Daughter and Granddaughter in
Their Relationship of Birth.
Special to the Gazette.

| Special to the Gazette.
| COHoEs, N. Y. April I8.-McGinty is
dead, at least one of him, and truthful
BILE in his experiences as the McGintv of
the song. Indeed, he fell to the bottom
| of the wall, like his rhymed namesake,
and in doing so made an odd case for the
| matrimonial, and to him agreeable
enough. He married three women who
| were grandmother, daughter and grand
daughter in their relationship of birth.
Your correspondent has searched out the
facts carefully and they are here set
down faithfully. John McGinty was
farm hand in the adjoining town of
Watervliet in 1887, when eighteen years
of age. He worked at odd times for the
Shaker community land was probation
airy candidate for membership. This
part of his story may be given au.obl-
geographically, by quoting his words from
the memory of a son.
"I'm thinkin' [ wasn't fit stuff to
make Shaker of, - McGinty is reported
on this authority as saying, 'Ffer I'd no
sooner fixed me two eyes on Bridget
marry her. -
Bridget was a widow, aged twenty
two, with daughter of five, and she
had been Shakeress for several years
the only Irish member of the Watervliet
family. There shall be no departure
from facts into fiction, in this account,
although there is temptation to let the
imagination dwell upon the courtship of
John and Bridget. But the truth really
is not ascertainable as to John g relin-
quishment of his desire to become a
Shaker, or of Budgets apostacy from
Shakerism IS doctrine of single blessed
ness. The record of the old Bible shows
merely that the two were welded in
1887. Ten years later the wife died,
leaving q son from whom most of the
particulars given in this dispatch are
obtained.
The Widower McGinty's step-daugh-
ter, Mary Murtha, was at this time If
teen years old. John had moved to this
city of Cohoes, then in its infancy as a
manufacturing village. It was here that
Thomas Moore wrote:
''From early morn till set of sun
I've seen the mighty Mohawk run. -
The Irish poet spent weeks at Mohawk
falls, where the wilderness was already
being obliterated, and the picturesque
waters turned into the fumes of mills.
For two years Mary Murths kept house
for her stepfather, and then, at the age
of seventeen, she became his wife. An
old daguerrotype, taken on the wedding
day, shows decidedly stalwart bride
groom, looking no more than his
thirty years, and bride who seemed too
shy to squarely face the camera, in the
manner required by the earlier operators
of the lens. Her hands gripped a book,
which was q characteristic thing in the
daguerrotype OF that period, and it is
easy to fancy that she was grittily de-
termined to be her mother S worldly sue
cessor as Mrs. McGinty. The son, again
quoting his deceased parents assertion,
says that Mrs. Mary McGinty was the |
image of Mrs. Bridget McGinty, and that |
the bridegroom felt as though he had |
been set back decade with the original |
wife again at his side.
Here comes page in McGinty's his |
tory which must not be torn out Of the |
volume, although it contains sad matter. |
In 1850, only eleven months after mar |
rage, Mary quilted her husband to elope |
with another man. The family tradition |
Is that the bereaved man took TO drink. |