The coins must have passed current for many years after they were first made, both in Ireland and in this country.
The Mark Newby coins in copper are plentiful even at the present time and command premiums of from fifty cents to five dollars, according to condition and variety. Those of silver are scarcer.
CHAMPLAIN TER-CENTENARY CELEBRATION.
The pretentious ter-centenary celebration of the discovery of Lake Champlain was opened at Plattsburgh, New York, on July 4, 1909, with religious services in all the churches. Pontifical high mass was celebrated at Cliff Haven, the home of the Catholic Summer School of America, by the Right Reverend Charles Henry Colton, D. D., Roman Catholic Bishop of Buffalo, New York, a member of our Society. The deacon was Rev. John T. Driscoll of Fonda, New York, a member of our Society, and among the attending prelates to Cardinal Gibbons was the Rev. John Grimes, coadjutor of Syracuse, also a member of our Society.
THREE “MOLL PITCHERS.” ONE WAS SURELY IRISH.
Professor Faust and other correspondents leave the reading public in a quandary regarding “the heroine of Monmouth.” One claims that she was German, another that she was American, and another, on the authority of the historian Lossing, declares that she was “a stout, red-haired, freckle faced young Irish woman.” One says she was “Moll Pitcher,” the wife of John Hays, a Pennsylvania artillery-man, and another that she was “Captain Molly,” the wife of a cannoneer from the banks of the Hudson in the State of New York.
HON. WILLIAM E. CHANDLER.
Formerly Secretary of the Navy and U. S. Senator from New Hampshire.
A New Member of the Society.
It probably has not occurred to these writers that three different women representing three different sections of the country and three different nationalities help to make dubious this perplexing old story. In 1738 there was born at Lynn, Mass., a Mary Diamond, who married a man named Robert Pitcher and became a famous fortune teller. She died in 1813 and was buried in the Western Burial Ground, West Lynn, where Lynn people take pride in pointing out her grave, for barring the fact that she was a fortune teller she was a reputable woman and her memory is respected. Her fame lived after her and in 1832 Whittier wrote a poem about her which renewed and increased the interest in her. Then a Boston playwright named Jones wrote a drama called “Moll Pitcher, or the Fortune Teller of Lynn,” which for more than thirty years was a popular favorite on the New England stage. It was also played in other parts of the country and was everywhere well received. The Lynn woman is the only Moll Pitcher that figured in history; with her the name originated, and others who wear it are simply fakes and frauds.
The honors of the alleged incident at Monmouth are shared by two different women, one of whom was from the Highlands of the Hudson and was undoubtedly Irish, and the other was from Pennsylvania and undoubtedly German. Both, without any reason, are now frequently referred to as Moll Pitcher. The real name of the Hudson River woman is not known. Lossing calls her Captain Molly and E. P. Roe calls her Molly O’Flaharty. She was the wife of a gunner in Colonel Lamb’s artillery, whose name does not appear upon the records as O’Flaharty but in fiction as Larry O’Flaharty.