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Minnie Quay

American ghost

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ10330445
Source-derived summary

Mary Jane "Minnie" Quay (May, 1861 – April 27, 1876) is an apparition who has been of keen interest to the paranormal circles of Michigan. The legend stems from a small foresting town in the eastern region of Michigan, known as The Thumb, called Forester, in present-day Forester Township.

The stories of elderly in the area say you must leave something on her headstone or she will follow you home. It is an interesting site to see what people leave ever year, mostly coins.

Legend

The Quay family, father James and mother Mary Ann, lived in the busy lumbering town of Forester. Their daughter, Minnie Quay, was only 15 at the time. She had given her heart to a young sailor whose ship would dock in Forester often for either shipping or merchant reasons. Not much is known about the gentleman, only that Minnie had fallen in love with him. Many in town warned her about this affair. Her own mother would often yell out loud enough for others in town to hear that she would rather see her dead than with this man.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Minnie Quay” as american ghost. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1861, 1876—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Minnie, Quay and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american ghost. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10330445. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1861 and 1876.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Minnie Quay”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Minnie Quay primary sources, Minnie Quay archive and Minnie research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Minnie Quay”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Minnie Quay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.