{"id":346060,"date":"2026-09-14T06:02:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T06:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/346060\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T06:02:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T06:02:22","slug":"a-nyc-bar-tells-tourists-the-wishbones-above-the-bar-belong-to-wwi-soldiers-who-never-came-home-a-new-yorker-profile-from-1940-says-theyre-the-founders-thanksgiving-leftovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/346060\/","title":{"rendered":"A NYC Bar Tells Tourists the Wishbones Above the Bar Belong to WWI Soldiers Who Never Came Home. A New Yorker Profile from 1940 Says They\u2019re the Founder\u2019s Thanksgiving Leftovers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\tMario Tama \/ Getty Images\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tBy \"\"<\/a>
\nNadia Santiago<\/a>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUpdated 47 minutes ago,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSeptember 14, 2026<\/p>\n

The bar is McSorley\u2019s in New York, and as the staff tells it, the wishbones have hung above the bar since 1917. Owner Bill McSorley knew what the drafted men were heading into, so he gave them all a free meal before they deployed. Each one hung a wishbone as a good luck charm, with the plan to grab it and snap it when they came home. Breaking it was the wish that got them through the war. The ones still up there belong to the men who never came back to take them down.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the version McSorley\u2019s tells on the tour, and it\u2019s a viral story at this point. The documented history is older and less tidy. Joseph Mitchell\u2019s 1940 New Yorker profile credits the bones to founder John McSorley himself, who \u201chad a remarkable passion for memorabilia\u201d and for years strung up the wishbones from his own Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys.<\/p>\n

\"PatronsGuests raise glasses inside McSorley\u2019s Old Ale House on East 7th Street in Manhattan, one of New York City\u2019s most storied taverns, in February 2006. Photo by Mario Tama \/ Getty Images.<\/p>\n

A December 1940 New York Sun piece describes it as an ongoing holiday custom, with regulars bringing in bones from their own birds each season. John died in 1910, seven years before the US entered WWI. By 1956 a wire item was calling them relics of an 1865 victory dinner. The doughboy version got layered on later, and no names of any 1917 regulars were ever recorded. A WWI New York historian has called the soldier tale \u201cmalarkey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MenPatrons file into McSorley\u2019s Old Ale House in Manhattan\u2019s East Village around 1970, one of the oldest Irish saloons in New York City. Photo by Peter Keegan \/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s solid: the bones are real, about 20 of them, and whatever they started as, they function as a memorial now. They stayed dusty for decades until a Health Department inspector flagged them in 2011. Longtime owner Matthew Maher cleaned them himself, and a few crumbled in the process. He saved the dust.<\/p>\n

\"DustyWishbones dangle from a light fixture at McSorley\u2019s Old Ale House in Manhattan\u2019s East Village, February 2024 \u2014 relics said to date back to a turkey dinner served to the 69th New York Infantry Regiment before their WWI deployment. Photo by Charly Triballeau \/ AFP via Getty Images.<\/p>\n

A few of the bones are broken because customers reached up to touch them. That\u2019s the fastest way to get thrown out. These days the staff and the regulars both watch over them.<\/p>\n

Thank you for reading. You can find Thought Catalog on Facebook<\/a>, and read more over on our website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tRead more Gossip<\/a>.\t\t\t<\/p>\n

About the author<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\"\"\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNadia Santiago<\/a>\n\t\t<\/p>\n

Nadia Santiago is a writer who lives between the clouds and the coastline, and writes about all the things your heart knows but your mouth can never quite say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mario Tama \/ Getty Images By Nadia Santiago Updated 47 minutes ago, September 14, 2026 The bar is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-346060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}