Jack Haggerty (The Flat River Girl) [Laws C25]

DESCRIPTION: Jack Haggerty has reformed his behavior to be a fit husband for the blacksmith's daughter. Following his long absence at work, she jilts him. He blames her mother, but gives up on women in general
AUTHOR: Dan McGinnis
EARLIEST DATE: 1872
KEYWORDS: courting virtue separation love work
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW,NE,So) Canada(Mar,Ont)
REFERENCES (22 citations):
Laws C25, "Jack Haggerty (The Flat River Girl)"
Doerflinger-SongsOfTheSailorAndLumberman, pp. 245-246, "Jack Haggerty" (1 text, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 260, "Jack Haggerty" (1 text)
Rickaby-BalladsAndSongsOfTheShantyBoy 1, "Jack Haggerty's Flat River Girl" (3 texts plus a fragment, 3 tunes)
Rickaby/Dykstra/Leary-PineryBoys-SongsSongcatchingInLumberjackEra 1, "Jack Haggerty's Flat River Girl" (3 texts plus a fragment, 3 tunes)
Peters-FolkSongsOutOfWisconsin, p. 140, "Flat River Girl" (1 text, 1 tune)
Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan 108, "Jack Haggerty" (1 text plus an excerpt and mention of 4 more, 1 tune)
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 214-217, "Jack Haggerty or The Flat River Girl" (1 text, 1 tune)
Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine, pp. 124-125, "Jack Haggerty" (1 text)
Beck-FolkloreOfMaine, pp. 262-263, "Jack Haggerty's Flat River Girl" (1 text)
Cazden/Haufrecht/Studer-FolkSongsOfTheCatskills 6, "The Flat River Raftsman" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Bethke-AdirondackVoices, pp. 72-73, "Jack Haggerty" (1 text, 1 tune)
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 218-219, "Jack Haggarty" (1 text)
Fowke-LumberingSongsFromTheNorthernWoods #63, "Jack Haggerty" (1 text, 1 tune)
Friedman-Viking/PenguinBookOfFolkBallads, p. 421, "Jack Haggerty" (1 text)
Sandburg-TheAmericanSongbag, pp. 392-393, "Flat River Girl" (1 text, 1 tune)
Botkin-TreasuryOfNewEnglandFolklore, pp. 566-567, "Jack Haggerty, or the Flat River Girl" (1 text, 1 tune)
Beck-SongsOfTheMichiganLumberjacks 50, "The Flat River Girl" (6 texts, 1 tune)
Beck-TheyKnewPaulBunyan, pp. 182-188, "The Flat River Girl" (3 texts, 2 tunes)
Beck-LoreOfTheLumberCamps 50, "The Flat River Girl" (5 texts, 2 tunes); 51, "The Cowboy's Flat River Girl" (1 text)
MidwestFolklore, Ivan H. Watson, "Folk Singing on Beaver Island," Volume 2, Number 4 (Winter 1952), p. 247, "Jack Haggerty's Flat River Girl" (reference only)
DT 607, FLATRVR*
Roud #642
RECORDINGS:
John Leahy, "Jack Haggerty" (on Lumber01)
John Norman, "Jack Haggerty (The Flat River Girl)" (AFS, 1938; on LC56)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Harry Bale (Dale, Bail, Bell)" [Laws C13] (tune)
cf. "I've Got No Use for the Women" (lyrics)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Platte River Girl
The Salt Creek Girl
NOTES [1326 words]: While this is usually a lumberjack's song, Beck reports a cowboy version from Texas. [That's the text "The Cowboy's Flat River Girl - RBW.] - PJS
The song is actually a sort of a gag; see the report Geraldine J. Chickering (summarized by Laws, NAB pp. 58-59). The full article, "The Original of a Ballad," is now available on the Internet Archive; it's in Modern Language Notes volume L (or, as the Archive puts it, Modern-Language-Notes-Voll-L; the text was very badly scanned and contains numerous errors, but still has details not in Laws), November 1935. The key portion of Laws's summary is as follows:
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."
Chickering's informants said that Haggerty was about 19 at the time (and that he wasn't bright enough to have written the song).
Supposedly the key source for this was Anna Tucker's brother-in-law, Joseph L. Kitzmiller, who had married Mary Tucker, Anna's younger sister, in 1873.
One might still be inclined to doubt this story -- Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, for instance, found a Greenville in Maine and located the song there. She also knew a report that the song was by Larry Gorman; this of course is just legend. More significantly, Rickaby had earlier investigated in the Flat River area of Michigan, where he reported that every singer claimed to have known Haggerty (whom he reports to have died c. 1915 -- obviously quite possible if he was a young man in 1872), giving additional details about the man's career. But there are plenty of claims by singers to have met people in songs who demonstrably never existed, so that doesn't mean much, and, interestingly, Rickaby failed to uncover McGinnis's involvement in the song.
Beck-TheyKnewPaulBunyan, p. 182, reports that Anne Tucker's family (and presumably Anne's husband George Mercer) disliked the song, but "In time the family aversion wore away, and Anne herself is said to have sung it to her Canadian friends." Unfortunately, this information is at third hand or worse.
So can we trust any of Chickering's report, which is based entirely on interviews with informants and not on historical research?
My conclusion is a (very slightly tentative) yes, because some of these people show up in the census, although census records from Greenville, Michigan are confusing. In the 1860 census, there is an "Ann Tucker" who is listed as born in 1854. But in the 1870 census, there is an ANNA, not ANNE, Tucker, who was born in 1856, not 1854. And, in the 1880 census, as Anna Mercer, she is listed as born in 1855. My assumption would be that the census taker guessed at her age in one year or another, or that the forms are hard to read. (I can't check this in detail because you have to pay for full access to the records.)
There is no Jane Tucker living in Greenville in 1860 or 1870. Both reports include a Sarah Tucker, however, confirming Chickering's statement that Anna's mother was named Sarah, not Jane. Sarah was born 1835 according to the 1860 census, in 1834 according to the 1870 record.
There were two John Tuckers in Greenville in 1860 and 1870, one born 1830 (1860 census) or 1828 (1870) and one 1859 (both reports); presumably the one born in 1828 is Anna's father, and the one born in 1859 is the one Chickering called Anna's brother. Since he was said to be three years younger than Anna, this is secondary evidence that the correct date for Anna's birth was 1856.
Mary Tucker, presumably the sister of Anna who married Kitzmiller, was born in 1858 according to both the 1860 and 1870 reports.
George Mercer apparently had not arrived in Greenville in time for the 1860 or 1870 censuses, but he is listed in the 1880 census, which says he was born in 1846. He and Anna seem to have had two children by then, "Nuie Mercer," born 1877, and Willie G. Mercer, born 1879. Willie Mercer is presumably the William Mercer to whom Chickering spoke; "Nuie Mercer" is probably a mis-reading or mis-hearing of "Nora Mercer," who according to Chickering later became Mrs. Nora Nichols and also remembered the story.
Mary Kitzmiller (the former Mary Tucker) also shows up in the 1880 census of Greenville, although this time, Mary is listed as born in 1857. J. L. Kitzmiller, presumably her husband Joseph who was Chickering's informant, is listed as being born in 1852 (which matches up with an age of 83 in 1935). The record also shows children John (born 1875) and Mary (born 1876).
The 1890 census is not online as if this writing, but Anna Mercer no longer lived in Greenville in 1900. Chickering does not have any details about Anna's later life other than the mention of her two children.
Bottom line: Census records confirm all the Tucker relationships reported by Chickering.
This doesn't mean that the census records confirm everything, which is why there is still some doubt. There was no John, James, or Jack Haggerty in the 1860 or 1870 census in Montcalm County (which contains Greenville). Nor can I find Dan McGinnis in any census, but of course "McGinnis" might have a different spelling. I looked at every name in Greenville without finding him, but I couldn't search every name in all of Montcalm County, let alone all of Michigan. Plus, of course, lumbermen moved around a lot. I also checked John W. Dasef, History of Montcalm County Michigan: Its People, Industries and Institutions, Volume 1, E. P. Bowen, 1916 (I use the 2019 Facsimile Publisher reprint); the index does not list any of the principals, and there is no mention of any of them in the chapter on Greenville. I do find a "Big Head McGinness" credited by E. C. Beck's informant with writing the song "Paddy Hart," which has some of the same sort of classical allusions as this song, and whose description sounds a big like the Dan McGinnis Chickering's informants described. So there is some very tenuous secondary evidence that there was a song-writing McGinnis in the Michigan woods in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
So there is still some residual doubt, but certainly Chickering's tale seems the likeliest explanation for the origin of this song.
Greenville is, as you might guess, a town on the Flat River, which runs mostly north to south and joins the Grand River a little east of Grand Rapids. Greenville itself is about thirty miles northeast of Grand Rapids.
Greenville, according to Wikipedia, was founded in 1844 by John Green, who built a sawmill there. That was normal for Michigan towns; according to Bruce Catton, Michigan, A History, 1972, 1976 (I use the 1984 Norton edition), p. 83, "It was not the timber that pulled the early settlers.... The forest was looked upon as an encumbrance, rather than an asset. When a new town was founded, one of the first buildings to be put up (provided water power was available...) was a sawmill.... The lumber had no cash value"; they built the sawmill to do something with the wood that they cleared to make fields. That was starting to change by the time Green founded his town, though. The town was platted in 1853, incorporated in 1867. And the town was on a railroad as well as a river, so it was easy to ship wood products. So it is no surprise to find lumber camps in the area in the 1870s.
A 1940 field recording by Dan Grant of Bryan, Wisconsin, from the Helene Stratman-Thomas collection and available on the University of Wisconsin-Madison library web site, puts this to the tune of "Vilikens and his Dinah." It sounds strange -- the tune is much too cheerful for the words! - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: LC25

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