Mary Travers

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Mary Allin Travers (November 9, 1936 – September 16, 2009) was an American singer-songwriter and member of the folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary, along with Peter Yarrow and (Noel) Paul Stookey. Peter, Paul and Mary was one of the most successful folk-singing groups of the 1960s. Unlike most folk musicians who were a part of the early 1960s Greenwich Village music scene, Travers grew up in that New York City neighborhood.

Early life and education

Mary Travers was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Robert Travers and Virginia Coigney, both journalists and active organizers for The Newspaper Guild, a trade union. In 1938, the family moved to Greenwich Village in New York City. Mary attended the progressive Little Red School House, where she met musical icons like Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson, the latter sang her lullabies. Mary did not graduate, she left in the 11th grade to become a member of the Song Swappers folk group.

Mary Travers (journalist)

Mary Travers Murphy (born July 31, 1958) is the Executive Director of the Family Justice Center of Erie County. She was formerly a consumer affairs journalist and was part of the Action 7 news team on ABC affiliate, WKBW-TV, based in Buffalo, New York. She left that position in June 2004. Prior to joining WKBW, Travers was a reporter for WEBR.

In 2005 she was elected to a four year term as town supervisor of Orchard Park, New York. In 2009 she did not seek re-election.

Personal life

She is married to John Murphy, the play-by-play announcer for the Buffalo Bills.

Mary Travers (disambiguation)

Mary Travers (1936-2009), American singer-songwriter; member of the folk, pop group, Peter, Paul and Mary.

Mary Travers may also refer to:

Murder of Mary Travers

Mary Travers was a teacher who was shot dead on 8 April 1984 by Provisional IRA gunmen trying to assassinate her father, Thomas, a Catholic magistrate. Mary Travers was 22 at the time. She, her parents and siblings had left St Brigid's Catholic Church in Derryvolgie Avenue in south Belfast when two gunmen opened fire. Mary Travers was shot once through the back and her father was shot six times. One gunman brought his gun to point-blank range at her mother's face and attempted to fire twice, but the gun jammed.

In a long letter published in The Irish Times in 1994, Thomas Travers wrote:

The IRA said in a statement that the killing of Mary Travers was accidental and that she had been killed by a bullet which passed through her father, hitting her in the back. The guns used in the attack had previously been used to assassinate Judge William Doyle in similar circumstances, in January 1983. Sinn Féin spokesperson Danny Morrison described the killing of Mary Travers as "tragic and regrettable" but said the targeting of her father was "directly related to the political situation in Ireland".

La Bolduc

Mary Rose-Anna Bolduc, née Travers, (June 4, 1894 – February 20, 1941) was a French Canadian singer and musician. She was known as Madame Bolduc or La Bolduc. During the peak of her popularity in the 1930s, she was known as the Queen of Canadian Folksingers. Bolduc is often considered to be Quebec's first singer/songwriter. Her style combined the traditional folk music of Ireland and Quebec, usually in upbeat, comedic songs.

Biography

Childhood

Mary Rose Anna Travers "La Bolduc" was born in Newport, Quebec, in the Gaspé region. Her father, Lawrence Travers, was an Anglophone of Irish heritage, and her mother, Adéline Cyr, was a French Canadian Mi'kmaq. Her family included five full siblings, and an additional six half-siblings from her father's first marriage. Bolduc and her eleven siblings spoke English at home, but also spoke French fluently. The family was extremely poor, but Bolduc attended school for a time, becoming literate in French.

Her only music teacher was her father, who taught her how to play the instruments that were traditional in Quebec culture of the era: the fiddle, accordion, harmonica, spoons and jaw harp. She learned traditional music from the two heritages, both Irish melodies and French-Canadian folk tunes. The family did not own a record player, piano or sheet music, so Bolduc learned jigs and folk songs from memory or by ear. She was giving casual public performances by the spring of 1908, when she played the accordion at the logging camp where she worked as a cook and her father as a lumberjack.