The oldest veteran of the United States Navy today celebrated the 102d anniversary of his birth. He is William Mackabee, better known to his associates as “Old Bill,” a native of Baltimore, whose reminiscences of the navy antedate the birth of the “boys” of seventy-five or eighty years of age, with whom he lives at the United States Naval Home in Philadelphia. At the age of twelve he enlisted on the Constitution as an apprentice boy, and from that day to this, an even ninety years without a break, he has been connected with the Navy Department. After his apprenticeship he became a boatswain’s mate until his retirement in 1874, when he entered the naval home. During the time that he was in active service he served on many famous vessels besides the Constitution, notably the Delaware, the Ohio, the Connecticut, and the Congress. It was from the deck of the last named that he fought in the memorable battle in Hampton Roads, in which the Monitor defeated the Merrimac.1
When he died in the Philadelphia Naval Hospital on October 5, 1910, at the age, perhaps, of 107, William “Sailor Bill” Mackabee was remembered as the oldest veteran of the United States Navy. Newspaper accounts in the years preceding his death bore such headlines as “Oldest Man in Navy Saw Battles of the War of 1812,” “He’s a Real ‘Old Salt,’” “Dean of the Navy,” and “Oldest
U.S. ‘Jacky’ Has 101st Birthday.”2 The 1905 Washington Post account quoted above goes on to note that Mackabee “is in possession of all of his faculties, with the exception of slight deafness in one ear” and that “his memory is very good.” In a newspaper story about his 100th birthday celebration Mackabee is quoted as saying, “I never was married. Sailors don’t get much chance to court their girls, you know.”3 In 1898, when required to respond to a series of questions about his marital status on a form submitted to the Bureau of Pensions, he answered that he was not, and never had been, married.4 Evidence strongly suggests, however, that he was married in Boston in 1863 and lived there for a time with his wife and three stepdaughters.
On March 8, 1862, Mackabee suffered serious injuries as the result of an explosion aboard the USS Congress during the Battle of Hampton Roads, also known as the Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack. He was treated at the New York Naval Hospital and then transferred to the Chelsea Naval Hospital outside of Boston on May 6, 1862. The 1865 Massachusetts state census for Boston’s Ward 4 in the North End shows a household in a multi-family dwelling whose members are William and Bridget McAvee, both married, and three girls, all born in Massachusetts, whose surname is recorded as McGinnis: Matilda, age 17; Kate, age 10; and Mary, age 8.5 William McAvee, age 68, is a seaman born in Maryland, and Bridget, age 45, is listed as a native of Ireland. Another resident of the same dwelling, Joanna Hardy, a widow, appears in the 1865 Boston city directory as living at 3 Mechanic Street in the North End: “Hardy Anna, widow, house 3 Mechanic.” This entry also appears in the 1865 city directory: “Mackabee Wm. house 3 Mechanic, (U.S.N.).” It thus seems clear that the William McAvee enumerated on the 1865 state census in Ward 4 is Sailor Bill Mackabee. But who is Bridget?
In a ceremony conducted by Rev. Edward Thompson Taylor of the Seamen’s Bethel in the North End on February 11, 1863, William McAvay, age 42, a mariner born in Baltimore, married Adelia Munroe, age 44, born in Scotland.6 Known as “Father Taylor,” Taylor is often cited as the prototype for Melville’s Father Mapple in Moby-Dick. The bride’s parents were Martin and Ann Lyons.7 Curiously, on May 5, 1860, Rev. Phineas Stowe, the minister of the First Baptist Mariners’ Church, another seamen’s bethel in the North End, had officiated at the marriage of Duncan Campbell, age 26, a mariner born in Scotland, to Bridget Lewis, age 35, a native of Ireland, who was also the daughter of Martin and Ann Lyons.8
In both instances, I believe the bride is Bridget Lyons McGinnis (c. 1825-1872). On September 14, 1852, Bridget Lyons and James McGinnis, a seaman born in Maine,9 were married in Charlestown by Paul Willard, a justice of the peace. They subsequently appear on the 1855 Massachusetts state census in a household in Boston’s Ward 1 that includes Matilda Lewis, age 8, and Catherine McGinnis, age 1, inferentially Bridget’s daughters. Matilda Lewis, age 3, had appeared on the 1850 federal census in a Boston household that included John Lewis, age 28, a seaman recorded as born in Germany,10 and Bridget Lewis, age 22, born in Ireland. When Matilda was baptized on September 28, 1847, at St. John the Baptist Church in the North End, the priest recorded her parents’ names as John Lewis and Bridget Lyons and her date of birth as September 22, 1847. Although the baptismal record states that Bridget Lyons is the wife of John Lewis, I have found no evidence of their marriage. It thus appears that when Bridget married Duncan Campbell in May 1860, she borrowed the surname of her daughter Matilda’s father. Her first husband, James McGinnis, had died of smallpox less than three months earlier, on February 26; their infant son, John J. McGinnis, had died on June 6, 1859.
On the 1860 federal census, which records inhabitants as of June 1, Bridget Maginnis [sic] appears in a North End household that includes three Maginnis girls, all born in Massachusetts: Matilda J., age 11; Catherine, age 6; and Mary E., age 4. Her appearance on the 1860 census with the surname Maginnis suggests that her marriage to Duncan Campbell was extremely short-lived, lasting less than a month. The given names and ages of Bridget’s daughters on the 1860 census, which correspond to those of the three girls in the McAvee household on the 1865 state census, confirm that the Bridget Maginnis of 1860 and the Bridget McAvee of 1865 were the same person. But was she the same person who, as “Adelia Munroe,” married Mackabee in 1863?
The answer to that question depends in large measure on what one makes of the city record of the McAvay - Munroe marriage. The information recorded for the bride is mostly consistent with what is known of Bridget Lyons McGinnis Campbell: she would have been approximately 38 years old in 1863, rather than the age of 44 entered on the record, but the parents’ names— Martin and Ann Lyons—match those on the marriage record of Duncan Campbell and Bridget Lewis three years earlier. The given name entered on the marriage record, Adelia, differs by only one letter from Delia, a common nickname for Irish women named Bridget. This was not Bridget’s second marriage, however, nor was she born in Scotland. But her second husband was, and the Munroe surname implies a Scottish origin.
Most of the information recorded for the groom fits what is known about William Mackabee: he is a mariner, born in Baltimore, and never married. The glaring discrepancy, however, is his age: Mackabee would have been approximately 60, not 42, in 1863. But if the groom was indeed Mackabee, he may have had good reason for narrowing the age difference between himself and a bride considerably younger. Furthermore, the age he supplied in 1863 approximates that entered on a document dated September 27, 1864, in Portland, Maine (below).11 It asserts that William Mackabee, age 40, a native of Baltimore, was examined by a naval surgeon and was mustered aboard the USS Sabine as a substitute for Columbus Hilton of New Portland, Maine. It also notes that Mackabee is married with three children, presumably Bridget’s three daughters.
Although William Mackabee was enumerated as a resident of Boston as of May 1, 1865, on the Massachusetts state census (as William McAvee), he was evidently not living there. He was admitted to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, from the USS Connecticut on June 7, 1865.12 His name appears on the April 1 and July 1, 1865, muster rolls of the Connecticut with his age listed as 40.13 A note on the hospital ticket states that he had shipped in Portland, Maine, on September 27 [1864], the same date as on the Sabine form. The 1870 census, which places him aboard the receiving ship Vandalia in Kittery, Maine, does not include information about marital status. The 1880 census records him as a widower, age 67, and illiterate; the 1880 supplemental schedule of pauper and indigent inhabitants categorizes him as “habitually intemperate.” At the time of the 1880 census, he was living as a beneficiary of the government in the U.S. Naval Asylum in Philadelphia, where, except for multiple hospital stays to be treated for alcoholism, he would remain until his death.
When Bridget McGinnis, “wife of James,” died of phthisis, i.e., tuberculosis, at 3 Mechanic Street on September 7, 1872, her maiden name was also entered on the death record as McGinnis, her birthplace as Ireland, and her parents’ given names as Edward and Annie. The informant for the death record, whoever it was, must have believed that the deceased was known as Bridget McGinnis, not Bridget Mackabee. And if, as seems likely, the informant was one of Bridget’s daughters, it is quite possible that she may not have known with certainty the names of her own maternal grandparents.
Especially if William Mackabee himself informed the census enumerator in 1880 of his status as a widower, he may well have known of Bridget’s death, only to deny or forget their marriage in later decades (the 1900 and 1910 federal censuses record his marital status as single). In that respect he bears comparison with Flannery O’Connor’s George Poker Sash in A Late Encounter with the Enemy:
This was not the same uniform he had worn in the War between the States. He had not actually been a general in that war. He had probably been a foot soldier; he didn’t remember what he had been; in fact, he didn’t remember that war at all. It was like his feet, which hung down now shriveled at the very end of him, without feeling, covered with a blue-grey afghan that Sally Poker had crocheted when she was a little girl. He didn’t remember the Spanish-American War in which he had lost a son; he didn’t even remember the son.
Sources
1. “Oldest Sailor in Navy,” Washington Post, September 23, 1905, p. 5.
2. “Oldest Man in Navy Saw Battles of the War of 1812,” Muskegon Daily Chronicle, October 21, 1908, p. 4; "He's a Real 'Old Salt,'" Baltimore Sun, August 2, 1903, p. 14; "Dean of the Navy," Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswick, NJ), January 2, 1906, p. 4; "Oldest U.S. 'Jacky' Has 101st Birthday," Washington Times, September 28, 1904, p. 3. The photo of Mackabee is taken from “Oldest Man in Navy Saw Battles of the War of 1812.”
3. “He’s a Real ‘Old Salt.’”
4. Fold3, US, Case Files of Approved Pension Applications of Civil War and Later Navy Veterans (Navy Survivors' Certificates), 1861-1910 (https://www.fold3.com/file/31568251?terms=mackabee,william), p. 10.
5. At Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in East Cambridge on July 10, 1881, Mary Elizabeth McGinnis (1856-1929), married John J. Coughlin (1857-1938), an older brother of Daniel B. Coughlan (1868-1945), my maternal grandfather. References to Boston Catholic sacramental records are taken from Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1920 Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2019.) From records supplied by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.
6. Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001, database with images, FamilySearch (https:// familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9QB-J7RD?cc=2061550&wc=Q4DS-MN5), Suffolk > Boston > Marriages 1863 no 1-1000 > image 345 of 1067; citing Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, Boston.
7. Although partially illegible on the certificate, Ann’s given name is fully legible on the 1863 register of Boston marriages.
8. Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001, database with images, FamilySearch (https:// www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9QB-Q7SR?cc=2061550&wc=Q4D9-82S:353350401,353366201,354607601&lang=en&i=781), Suffolk > Boston > Marriages 1860 no 1-1500 > image 782 of 1521; citing Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, Boston.
9. His death record gives his birthplace as St. John, New Brunswick.
10. Records of the Provident Institution for Savings show a $400 deposit made on May 31, 1854, by John Lewis, a seaman, born in St. George in the Western Islands, i.e., the Azores, and residing at 40 Fleet Street in the North End. An Azorean birth for Lewis (anglicized from the Portuguese Luis?) seems more likely than a German one. Boston, MA: Provident Institution for Savings, 1817-1882. (Online database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2020). From Provident Institution for Savings in the Town of Boston Records, 1816-1985. Boston Athenaeum.
11. Maine, Civil War Navy enlistment papers, 1864-1865 database with images, FamilySearch (https:// www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L93N-Z99T-Z?i=229&cat=1881489&lang=en), image 230 of 566; citing Maine State Archives.
12. Ancestry.com. U.S., Naval Hospital Tickets and Case Papers, 1825-1889 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. Original data: Hospital Tickets and Case Papers, compiled 1825-1889. NAID: 2694723. Department of the Navy, Records of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Record Group 52. National Archives at Washington, D.C.
13. National Archives, Muster Rolls of U.S.S. Conestoga 1863-1864 & U.S.S. Connecticut 1861-1865 (https:// catalog.archives.gov/id/134415932), images 83 and 91 of 95.