July 5, 2025
It’s July.  It’s hot, and sometimes rainy.  It’s hot even when it’s rainy.  This explains the lack of MG activity this month.  The only thing scheduled is the July dinner hosted by the Brammeiers, Mark & Susan.  The dinner is July 17th.  I’ll pass along the rest of the details as soon as I have them.

That’s it.  All of July in one paragraph.  Unless.  Unless someone has a pop-up event in the making.  If so, make sure to tell me so I can tell everyone else.

Stay cool and I’ll see you somewhere.
 
GCMGR
Lann
 
PS:  I know this newsletter is late.  It should have come out before the 4th of July so that you could have celebrated the 4th with your MG.  I couldn’t come up with a reason how 4th of July and MG went together.  Driving your MG in a 4th of July parade would be like the Dodgers walking along at the end of the ticker tape parade for the Mets winning the World Series.  It would just be the losers tagging along after the winners.  Not the best way to honor your MG.

Which leads us to the reason that the newsletter is late.  I have been scouring the internet, going down every dusty cob-webby hall, examining every book in every lost library, searching long lost databases and I think I have pieced together the almost true story.

It’s thin, almost transparent, it’s full of “ifs”, “maybes” and “it’s possible” but it is the best I can put together.  Here’s the story.

Don Hayter was the Chief Designer of the MGB.  Don worked his whole life in the British car industry and, from all accounts, was perfectly happy being an Englishman, as was his great-great-great grandfather Cowell Hayter.  Cowell’s brother, Magnus was a bit more, let’s call it adventuresome.  The gist was that he sailed to America.  The records are hazy, but a married woman, an unpaid gambling debt and the threat of prison may have influenced his decision to sail away.  Again, there is little, if any, proof that Magnus actually had a ticket to the colonies.  It may have been that he worked as a carpenter on the ship and that upon reaching America, his debt was sold to a New York shipwright.

Other than his occupation being listed as shipwright, there is little known, or proven, about his stay in New York.  However, about the time that Magnus disappeared from the official documents there was quite the society kerfuffle, this time involving the daughter of a prominent judge and a hotel bill.  Magnus Hayter never appears in the official records again.

Here the story gets even thinner.

About a year after Magus Hayter disappeared from New York, out of nowhere, one Marcus Hayman suddenly appeared on the 1773 rolls in McConkey’s Ferry, Pennsylvania as a shipwright at the Parker Boat Company.

Did Magus Hayter change his name to name to Marcus Hayman?  I’m going to assume that he did, otherwise this whole story falls apart and it’s thin enough as it is. 

Based on hopeful conjecture (and wishful thinking) I’m going to make a leap of faith and state, without any tangible proof, that Marcus Hayman, aka Magus Hayter, helped build the boats that George Washington used to cross the Delaware on Christmas Day 1776 which lead to the Battle of Trenton and ultimately the defeat of the British and the independence of the United States of America.
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There you have it.  When the next 4th of July parade comes along you can drive your MG and proudly proclaim that MG ancestors helped win our independence.
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