Hello, this is Carl Raymond, host of the Gilded Gentleman History Podcast. For this month of June,

we are adding a bonus episode into the schedule, an encore release of one of the most discussed

episodes and stories I've done since the show launched. If you don't know the story of Murray Hall,

it's a story you won't soon forget. And despite the fact that Murray

died in 1901, and he lived his life in New York's Greenwich Village during the years of the

Gilded Age, it's a story that could not possibly have more resonance and importance today.

I could not be more honored to share it with you once again.

As the 1890s turned towards 1900, the dawn of the new century, residents of what we think of as today's Greenwich Village would have known pretty well one of their local politicians and businessmen and thought of him as a perhaps colorful, politically passionate, maybe a bit rough around the edges at times, but certainly a good-hearted member of the 13th senatorial district.

A fixture of the neighborhood, you could say. He bought his newspapers from the same woman on

the corner every day, and local booksellers knew that he was a devoted and a serious reader. His fairly short

stature, thick hair crushed, often under a nearly ever-present hat, and his trademark baggy

wool coat made him easily recognizable to his colleagues and his constituents as they spotted

him walking toward them far down the street.

His name was Murray Hall.

And he was always ready to shake the hands of neighbors,

fellow business owners, and local workers to get their support for Tammany Hall,

one of the most famous and infamous political engines of 19th century New York history,

whose purpose it was touted was to help

the working man. Open, and it seems gregarious, Murray Hall's life held a secret, so deeply

and quietly personal that it seems that he never shared it with his closest confidants, and even,

it seems, his adopted daughter.

120 years after his death in 1901, it's time to not only share his secret, but that in truth

...