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MRS. CUNNINGHAM AGAIN
A Part of Her Life Subsequent to
the Burdell Murder - Married to
a Man whom She Had Jilted
Years Before - The Fright
and Flight of the Husband.
[From the New York Sun, January 23d.]
In 1873, while the United States steamer Narragansett, with a part of the coast survey on board, was off the coast of Lower California, it became necessary to take a pilot acquainted with the numerous reefs, shoals, and pearl banks of the gulf, a body of water that had never been surveyed, and that was almost as much unknown as the Lake Albert Nyanza in Africa is to-day. The steamer was near Cape San Lucas, the southern end of the peninsula, and on reaching that point inquiries were made relative to the qualifications of pilots there. The commander of the party learned to his surprise that Captain Wm. Hyde was the only pilot on the Gulf of California, and he was employed and installed as a member of the scientific corp. Captain Hyde was an American, who had passed a lifetime as eventful as that of almost any one of the many who “go down to the sea in ships;” and when the arduous duties of the day were done, and the younger members of the corps had tired of singing about the girl they had left behind them, the old man’s sea yarns were in demand; and the “smoking party” on the poop deck never wearied of the stories of his exciting adventures afloat and ashore, his “hairbreadth ‘scapes by flood and field,” and the many amusing episodes that had checkered his career with bright colors.
CAPT. HYDE’S LIFE
Capt. Hyde had not always been a sailor. He started in life as a clerk many years ago, in what was then a humble little tobacco store in this city. To-day it is one of the wealthiest establishments in the country, and occupies the old site still. While here he fell in love with a New York girl, and was engaged to be married to her; but “fickle, false, and full of fraud,” she jilted him, and the disconsolate boy left the city, and for a number of years was believed to be dead. His cruel sweetheart had married a Mr. Cunningham, a name that will be forever associated with one of the most mysterious murders ever recorded in the annals of crime. She became, in short, the Mrs. Cunningham in whose house in Bond street Dr. Burdell was murdered, and who was tried for the crime and acquitted. Young Hyde shipped aboard a whaler bound for the Pacific, served his time, engaged in the pearl fishery in the Gulf of California, and at last settled in the old town of Loreto. the ancient capital of the Californias, when he married a native woman, who died soon afterward. About this time he discovered a copper mine in the high mountain known as “La Giganta,” just back of Loreto, and for a time busied himself in developing its resources. He might have been working there still, but for an unfortunate and no less singular circumstance that again changed the current of his life, and again sent him a wanderer out into the wide world.
MRS. CUNNINGHAM’S CAREER
At the close of the trial of Mrs. Cunningham she disappeared from New York, and various were the surmises in regard to her whereabouts. She was frequently seen, according to the reports, in a dozen places at the same time, but could never be fully identified; and her death was so often announced that many people began to doubt whether she had ever had an existence. The truth is that, taking a son and a daughter with her, she went to Lower California, and at Loreto met Captain Hyde. The intimacy of bygone years was renewed, and in due time they were married. They were frequently visited by the officers of the Narragansett, but Mrs. Cunningham-Hyde and her children were very reticent when ever the Burdell murder was mentioned. The marriage proved an unhappy one, and poor Captain Hyde, fearing that his wife would make away with him as he felt morally certain she had made away with his children – two had died within a short period – fled to another part of the State, leaving his mine in charge of a superintendent, a Mexican. Shortly after the old man’s disappearance his wife ran away with the superintendent, and they sold the mine for a large sum. The company who bought it having failed to comply with the Mexican mining laws, the property was confiscated by the State. Mrs. Cunningham’s children then made a demand for it. It was transferred to them and is now in their possession. The son and daughter still reside in Lorenzo, a miserable out-of-the-way place of less than a hundred inhabitants. It was ote, however, a large city, but was destroyed by an earthquake many years ago. There are several fine ruins in and about the place that prove it to have been at one time a lordly city. Young Cunningham supports himself and his sister by working a small ranch. She lives in the village with her child. She was never married, and in the haggard woman of thirty-five, old long before her time, there is no trace of the beautiful young girl who played so conspicuous a part in the great mystery of a few years ago. The old man gained a scanty subsistence by teaching here and there, and finally settle at Purissima, a small village above Magdalena Bay, near the outer coast. Here he died. When last heard from Mrs. Cunningham was living in luxury in California. What became of her Mexican paramour is not known.
