Butler author Kathy Smith found her in-laws’ stories so fascinating that she turned them into a book.

“I married into a family who is related to the man who wrote the song, ‘The Old Gray Mare.’ They moved from Baltimore to Butler decades ago,” Smith said.

“My mother-in-law, Mary Patricia Forcht, is the granddaughter of the main character, Thomas McNulty. She is 94 and helped me in writing the book by telling me stories of her grandfather and his family,” she said.

“She was only 4 when he died but she remembers holding his hand while he lay in bed in the last several months he was alive. She had lots of stories of the sheriff's daughters and wife, who lived until 1960.”

Smith’s latest book is called “The Singing Sheriff of Baltimore: The Old Grey Mare and the Stolen Election.” She self-published it in October. It is available on Amazon and by emailing the author at kmstks@hotmail.com.

Forcht’s grandfather, Thomas F. McNulty, was an Irish/German second-generation immigrant who lived in Baltimore. He became a well-known local singer in Baltimore and was sought after for his talent. Politicians asked him to sing for campaign rallies.

McNulty’s song, “The Old Gray Mare,” was taught to school children since 1887, when he wrote it for mayoral candidate Ferdinand Latrobe.

Later, McNulty wanted to become sheriff and ran four times. In his third attempt, his own party cheated him out of a probable win.

“He wanted to run for sheriff. In the primary, the party leaders said they were going to support him. But the party bosses controlled those who counted the handwritten ballots,” Smith said.

The day after the election, when he found out he lost, McNulty canvassed his supporters and gathered 24 affidavits, a process that eventually led to indictments.

McNulty was elected to the position on his fourth try and served for 10 years as the sheriff of Baltimore. Smith said when he first took office, he had to use $5,000 of his own money to make payroll.

Smith said the sheriff’s office at that time was funded solely by the fees and fines it took in, a system that was rife with corruption.

Their efforts in election fraud and McNulty’s efforts in discovering the truth brought about a grand jury, where over 200 indictments were handed down and jail terms given.

Smith said the more research she conducted, the more fascinating his life became.

McNulty was born Sept. 10, 1859, the year solar flares made the Aurora Borealis visible as far south as Louisiana. He was 2 years old during the Baltimore Massacre.

“I was surprised. I didn’t think I would find proof that he wrote ‘The Old Grey Mare,” she said, noting that many sources today claim the writer of the song is unknown.

Smith said her book is a “a real immersion into the culture and events spanning from 1870 to 1923 (in) Baltimore and America.”

“It took eight months to write, but the research took about two years,” Smith said. She did much of her research on the internet looking over old newspapers.

“He was a local celebrity, so he was in the newspaper every day for 30 years,” Smith said.

She began to follow the trail of McNulty when she married Tom Smith, who spent 20 years in the military, and moved to Butler.

Tom Smith’s grandfather, a Coca Cola plant supervisor, moved from Baltimore to Bethlehem, Pa., in 1935, and later to Oil City in 1948.

Kathy Smith said she, herself, has had 30 jobs in industries as various as food service and the performing arts. She said her husband’s last job, before retiring, was working for the federal Office of Personnel Management’s Retirement Operations Center in Boyers.

She took up writing and has written four other books before penning “The Singing Sheriff of Baltimore: The Old Grey Mare and the Stolen Election.”

“I have four others, but they’re not nonfiction. I have a trilogy that is science fiction time travel called ‘The Weeping Willow’ trilogy,” Smith said.

“I wrote ‘My Journal for Anterior Hip Replacement: Surgery and Recovery’ after I had my hip replacement,” she said

She will have a book signing from 6 to 7 p.m. Jan. 10 at the Butler Area Public Library, 218 N. McKean St. She will have books to sell at the signing.

Lori Hinderliter, director of the Butler library, said Smith will be the first author in 2023 to be featured in the library’s meeting room.

“We try to use local authors, but that doesn’t have to be the case,” Hinderliter said. “We approach them, or sometimes they approach us.”