The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1898-02-10
MARRIED IN L1NcoLN's COAT.

Inc Garment MADE LOT the flTSI In
auguration, but Col. Mccoy "Bribed"
the Tailor and Got 1t.
One Of the notables of the convention
of the National Stock Growers Associ-
alton, now in session in the city, is Jo-
seph G. Mccoy, a Kansan of Scotch
Irish, Tennessee Kentucky descent. He
is a man whose personal appearance
would make him conspicuous in any
assemblage. He is over six feet tall,
and his hair is a weather-Wo gray
not the silvery gray which covers the
heads of men who grow old in offices
or studios, but the tawny, vigorous
gray that an old man has who has
spent his life sailing seas or penetrat
ing little known lands.
You know he is a southern man be-
fore he speaks. The soft hat, the big
Chesterfield coat, the h-heeled boots
with the soft calfskin bootleg wrinkling
down about the ankle, all proclaim the
mans descent-and yet he was mar
red in, and still cherishes, the coat
that Abraham Lincoln was to have
worn when he was inaugurated. The
faces of men who have gone with the
vanguard into new countries, who have
toiled by day on the sunburnt plains
and lain by night under the open skies
the faces of these men are book;
and the book almost always reads of
courage and honesty, Of fortitude and
faith, and determination and man
hood.
Col McCoys is one of these faces
and figures; almost patriarch under
the tale of his years and yet young
enough to glory in his strength.
One of the Colonel's meditative occu-
pations is to ascertain the strain of
blood in his breed. His people have
been Scotch-Irish through all the de-
scent, and his father was a Tennessean
and his mother Kentuckan. He was
born n IIllnos and moved nto Kansas
in 1S67-"and in the kingdom of heaven
whose wife was she?' asks the Colonel
with pathos big in his voice.
The Colonel took part in two i'm
portant campaigns in 1853 In one of
these he helped ABE" Lincoln to beat
Stephan A. Douglass, and in the other
he laid siege to charming young
woman of the same province and capt
ured her He celebrated the Lincoln
Inauguration by marrying the maid,
and he married her clad in the coat the
Springfield tailor had made for ABE"
to be inaugurated in. He got the tail
or to hustle up another coat for ABE
in which to take the oath, and when
ABE" was swearing in Washington to
do his duty by Uncle Sam young Nc
| Coy was, on or about the same time,
meekly promising to love, honor, and
s1.4
or Kicking" to obey charming young
woman of "Abes" own town; and he
was wearing the coat abe" was to
have worn.
Some of Col. McCoy's friends insist
that the garment fitted the groom bet
ter than it did the President, which,
they declare, is not saying that the
! Colonel would have made a better
| President for the coat than abe" Lin
coin, but simply that he was possessed
of better figure. That may be true
for, in his young mans days the
Colonel must have indeed looked man
among men.
Col. Mccoy some years ago published
a volume of "reminiscences, of the plains
and it's men and herds, and it is said tc
be rarely interesting in its color and
dramatic spirit. The Colonel is now
cattle inspector for the state of Kansas
at the Kansas City stockyards, and has
also established an agency for the col
lection and adjustment of the excess
charges of the yard company above the
rates fixed by the Kansas law for feed
and yardage. He has arisen high or
one side of fortunes wheel, and held or
long enough to be thrown hard on the
opposite side. His friends now hope
that he is on the rising side of the
wheel, and that he will soon be in q
position to let go and retire from bust
ness and its cares. He is a great.