5 Jul 1894 - Tri-States Union (Port Jervis, New York)
- Mrs. Mary Long of Newburg Admits the Relationship -
She Believes Mrs. Halliday is Insane, But She Would Not do Anything to Help Her - Some Facts About Mrs. Halliday’s Folks - Her Father Went Insane. [From the Newburg News of June 26]
A sister of Mrs. Halliday, the Sullivan county murderess, resides in this city. The fact was asserted soon after the murder, but was emphatically denied by the husband of the Newburg lady. Now the lady herself admits it. She is Mrs. Mary Long, the wife of John Long, of 53 Johnes street. Mr. Long is a sawyer, and has been employed by Thomas Shaw’s Sons for many years. The family are well-to-do and highly respectable people. The following dispatch was published in a New York paper yesterday:
Sheriff Beecher has a letter from Mrs. Halliday’s sister in Newburg, in which she says she would not give five cents to save her sister’s life. The sister believes LIzzie is shamming, as she says no one in her family ever was insane;
On this being read to Mrs. Long, she said it was true that the woman called Lizzie Halliday was her sister. She asked her visitor to be seated, and said she was glad that some one had called through whom she could publish a denial of the slighting remarks that had been made on her family, the McNallys. Mrs. Long was greatly distressed over her sister’s fate and the fear that her people would be disgraced thereby. She wept bitterly as she spoke of these things. Her daughter and a friend, Mrs. Dewey, were present, and begged her to be calm. It is said Mrs. Long has suffered greatly mentally ever since she discovered that the terrible Mrs. Halliday was her own sister.
“I did say that I would not give five cents to save her life, but I did not say she was shamming insanity,” declared Mrs. Long. “Sheriff Beecher of Sullivan county was here to see me. I told him I could say no good of her, and I would say no bad of her. I would not help her, and wanted nothing to do with her. The way I came to write him a letter was, he wrote me saying that the lawyer, Carpenter, wanted $400. I wrote back that I would not give five cents. I did not say that she was not inane, because she is. I did not say there was no inanity in the family, because my father was out of his head seven years before he died”
“Oh, he was just childish,” interposed Mrs. Dewey.
“No, he was entirely out of his head. I went to see him three times before he died, and he did not know me. And there was another on his side that was out of his mind - born so.”
Being asked to begin at the beginning and give an account of her family, Mrs. Long said that they came from the north of Ireland to this country twenty-one years ago next December. Their father, old Mr. McNally, and old Mr. McQuillan were members of the same lodge in the old country and worked in the same shop or factory. When the McNallys came to America they settled first in Washington county, except Jane, their sister, who had left the old country before the rest of the family and was living at Mr. Heron’s place, on the turnpike in the town of Newburgh. There were nine children in all: John, who now lived in Vermont; Mrs. Rosanna Anderson, who now lives in Washington county, this state; Samuel, who is dead; Mrs. Jane Dewey, who lived in Washington county and died there two or three weeks after the murders; Mrs. Mary Long of Newburgh; Mrs. Nancy Allen, Mrs. Duff Allen and Frank Allen of Washington county; all these besides Mrs. Halliday. Mrs. Dewey died of grief and shame because of the crimes committed by her sister.
Mrs. Dewey, who was at Mrs. Long’s house yesterday, is a sister-in-law of Mrs. Jane Dewey.
“Elizabeth was not her name,” said Mrs. Long, referring to Mrs. Halliday, “although she gave that as her name. Her real name was Margaret. The family stayed in Washington county only a few months, then we came here. For a while we lived out on the turnpike. I went to work for Mr. Boyd at New Windsor and was there for seven years and four months. I don’t ever remember the McQuillans coming to our house when the family was here, though Mr. McQuillan says that he and his wife passed one night there. They might have done so, and I not know it, for I was not living at home then. I did not see much of Margaret after we came to this country. She was then fifteen years old. They all moved back to Washington county except me, and father died and was buried in Vermont.
“Margaret was well behaved as a little girl and very clearly. She went back to Washington county and there married about seventeen years ago a man named Hopkins, who lived in the village of Greenwich. About eleven years ago she came here to Newburgh with her little boy. It appears that her husband did not treat her right and had shot three times at her. She came here to get away from him. My brother told me to be careful to see that he did me no harm, because he said she ought to be put where she would be taken care of. I was sick when she came and I was afraid of her. I agreed with everything she said, so as not to cross her.
Mrs. Long’s daughter, Abbie, told how the family made a visit to the Matteawan asylum, and while there saw a woman hide her face when they passed. The woman was Mrs. Halliday.
Mrs. Long was asked if she knew that her sister was Mrs. Halliday at the time she was in jail here for horse-stealing and barn-burning, and she said she did not. It was not until her husband told her that he had been asked if Mrs. Halliday was her sister that it began to dawn on her who the woman was. When her husband denied that Mrs. Halliday was any relative of theirs, he did not know that she was.
Mrs. Long was firmly of the opinion that her sister was insane. She said it was a great mistake that she was ever released from the asylum. She should have been kept where she could do no harm.