Martin H. Glynn in a 1909 portrait by Samantha L. Huntley. Still a young man, he was already the owner and publisher of the Times Union and a few years away from ascending to the governor's office.
Martin H. Glynn, the man who sold the Times Union to William Randolph Hearst, blended careers in journalism and politics in ways that would be impossible today.
In the early 20th Century, Glynn was an Albany-based figure of national and even international prominence — a notability that lent his newspaper a newfound prestige. By the time of the 1924 sale, Glynn had served as a congressman and a state comptroller. He had also been New York’s first Catholic governor.
His achievements were made more remarkable by his humble roots in Valatie, then a blue-collar Columbia County mill town on the banks of the Valatie Kill and Kinderhook Creek. Glynn’s family ran a saloon there. His father worked on the railroad.
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Growing up, Glynn was one part Tom Sawyer and one part Horatio Alger, says Dominick Lizzi, a Valatie historian who has written a biography of Glynn titled “Forgotten Hero.” Lizzi describes him as an imp who stole pies as they warmed on local windowsills, but also a “two-fisted street boy” who fought on behalf of local gangs.
He was, in other words, an unlikely candidate to become an international statesman.
But Glynn was a strong enough student that a local parish priest encouraged him to go to Fordham University, with tuition provided by a loan from Kinderhook Savings Bank. It turned out to be money well invested: Glynn graduated as the valedictorian of his class and soon after went to work at the Hudson Register newspaper.
In 1896, he jumped to the Times Union, which was owned at the time by John Farrell, whose son had been a classmate of Glynn’s at Fordham. Remarkably, Glynn became the newspaper’s managing editor later that year. He had just turned 25.
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The Farrells, a wealthy and politically prominent Irish-Catholic family, essentially adopted Glynn, bringing him into the family, the newspaper business and Albany’s power centers.
“I think they really trusted him,” Lizzi said. “They took care of him.”
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