Patrick McGarry and the Cage

The Cage

 --Patrick McGary was last night assigned to the cage on the charge of being drunk and firing a pistol at John Henderson in the street.

-The Daily Dispatch: August 6, 1863

 Hustings Court.

 Patrick McGary, indicted for shooting at a person in the street, was fined $100 and sent to jail for six months.

 -The Daily Dispatch: September 18, 1863



 . . . the rest of the story . . .

Patrick McGarry, pardoned October 6, 1863.

 In the court of hustings for the city of Richmond, at the August term 1863, Patrick McGarry was tried on an indictment, and convicted of firing at a man in one of the streets of the city, and was sentenced to pay a fine of one hundred dollars and costs of prosecution, and to be confined six months in the city jail. McGarry was at the time the offence was committed a private in the 17th Mississippi regiment, and is reported to have been a quiet, inoffensive, and respectable man, and an excellent soldier. It appears that on the day of the shooting McGarry had gone into a drinking house, and while there was assaulted and beaten in a violent manner, and taken up and thrown into the street. Smarting under this treatment, he went off, and shortly alter returned with his musket, and seeing a Mr Henderson standing in the door of the saloon where he had received the beating, he fired at him, mistaking him for the person by whom he had been beaten; but no harm resulted. The person shot at did not appear against him, and the prisoner had no counsel. The mayor of the city who committed him asked his discharged, stating in his letter: "Had I not felt constrained, under the terms of the law, to commit him, I would have discharged him. I now pray your excellency to grant him a pardon from the imprisonment." For these reasons, I directed his discharge, not relieving him however, from the payment of the fine and costs.

- Message of the Governor of Virginia and Accompanying Documents
Richmond: William F. Ritchie, Public Printer. 1863



Patrick McGary(in some records McGarry) enlisted in Corinth, Mississippi on May 27th, 1861 as a private in Co. B., 17th Mississippi Vols. Five feet four, blond hair and blue eyes the 39 year old, Irish born McGary was by occupation a laborer. He was discharged in September, 1862.

All according to his discharge paperwork.