Mary Elizabeth "Polly" Houghland  was born in 1797 in Williamsport, WV and began to seek God's favor at an early age.As a 14-year-old student at Marietta Academy (now Marietta College) on the Ohio River, she boarded with a Presbyterian family. One Sunday she wanted to attend the Methodist meeting and asked where they met for worship, but the family refused to tell her. She said she would follow the sound of the church bell then, but they told her the Methodists had no bell. "Then," she said, "I will go and stand in the street and wait till someone comes along who looks like a Methodist, and I will follow that one to the house of God." Some women came by, dressed plainly and wearing very plain bonnets. "These," she said to herself,"are Methodist; I will follow them." They led her to a prayer meeting in a kitchen, where she gave her heart to God.

When Polly returned home for school vacation, she asked her father Cornelius Houghland if they could have family prayer. Receiving his approval, she prayed with them regularly for sometime. Finally her father told her he thought she would "better not pray any more in the house," so she began to pray in the garden after nightfall, sometimes until she fell to the ground exhausted. Her worried parents would search for her, and after several occurrences, her father told her to go back inside to pray. As a result, most of her family came to know God.

When a Methodist preacher was asked to speak at a neighbor'shouse warming, he invited Polly to pray after the sermon.According to the story, "she commenced in a low, feeble tone ofvoice, but soon her prayer began to go up and up until it reached the throne of God, and power from on high came down upon the people; sinners fell to the floor and cried for mercy, and many found peace with God," including the owner of the house, who gave up whisky and declared that he was "going to start for heaven this very night."

Once at a camp meeting, Polly fell to the ground under the powerful blessing of God and lay there as if she were dead. A skeptic at the meeting thought she was pretending, since her eyes were still wide open. But when a fly landed on her eyeball without causing it to move, the unbeliever declared, "This is no hypocrisy." He was converted and later traveled as a Methodist preacher.

Polly taught school before marrying Edmund McGinnis at age 24. When her father Cornelius was fatally struck by the tree, she was the one who took him by the arm and helped him into the house. With Edmund, she made her home in Cabell County, WV, giving birth to ten children, though only her four sons survived her. Her husband and four children relocated to Texas when she was 59. In her first letter home in 1856, she describes her new surroundings: "4 miles to church a tolerable good meeting house and good preaching and good class... Father, Elizabeth [herdaughter-in-law] and myself have joined the class and are tryingto make our way to heaven pray for us that we faint not by the way... are we settle for life is uncertain for we are as the rowling stone that gathers little moss Yet we hope in the end to reap and faint not... Leaving you all behind how painful to tell but hope to meet again in life or in blest eternity where parting is no more."

On March 9, 1871, 73-year-old Polly wrote a letter to her son David Allen McGinnis and to some of her grandchildren that, "I am abel to work and write a little though I feel quite feeble and often cough verry hard and suffer much yet the hope of heaven bears me up and I hope to live a while longer and want to groe better... Arden [another grandson] profest religion four hours before he died and talked to all present and bid them farewell and died praising the lord so we are all fast passing away... Mary and Samantha, Adorn the profeshion you have made and walk in the footsteps of the righteous and write when youcan and pray often." She concludes with a note to 13-year-old Enoch Marsh McGinnis, saying, "My dear little grandson I was glad to hear from you be kind to all and fear and love God with all your heart and write again and tell Parmenias to write to me." Polly McGinnis died July 6, 1876, apparently of tuberculosis.

Illustrated family histories of the ancestors of Michael David McGinnis, from Ireland, Germany, Bohemia, England, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas, including Edmund McGinnis, Polly Houghland, Christopher O'Bryan, Thomas Berwick, Robert Perry, Rebecca Nurse, Hiram Langdon Nourse, Christoph Ashorn, Carl Findeisen, and James Harvey Kidd. http://biographiks.com/pleasant/pleasant.htm