Peter Yarrow, singer from Peter, Paul and Mary folk trio, dead at 86

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Peter Yarrow, known as part of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died, Fox News Digital can confirm.

Yarrow passed away Tuesday in New York City with his family by his side, according to his manager. The musician had spent the last four years battling bladder cancer.

"Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life. The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest," his daughter Bethany said in a statement shared with Fox News Digital.

"Driven by a deep belief that a more compassionate and respectful world is possible, my father has lived a cause driven life full of love and purpose," the statement continued. "He always believed, with his whole heart, that singing together could change the world. Please don’t stop believing in magic dragons. Hope dies when we stop believing, stop caring, and stop singing.  He may have been a dyed in the wool progressive, but his passion and music touched people of all ages and political stripes around the world."

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Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary, has died. He was 86. (Getty Images)

Yarrow was one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, alongside fellow musicians Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers. The trio lost Travers in 2009 during her battle with Leukemia. She died following complications associated with chemotherapy.

"Being an only child, growing up without siblings may have afforded me the full attention of my parents, but with the formation of Peter, Paul and Mary, I suddenly had a brother named Peter Yarrow," Stookey said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital. "He was best man at my wedding and I at his. He was a loving ‘uncle’ to my three daughters. And, while his comfort in the city and my love of the country tended to keep us apart geographically, our different perspectives were celebrated often in our friendship and our music. 

"I was five months older than Peter – who became my creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical younger brother – yet at the same time, I grew to be grateful for, and to love, the mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and inspiring guidance he shared with me like an older brother," he added. "Politically astute and emotionally vulnerable, perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had…and I shall deeply miss both of him."

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Noel "Paul" Stookey, Mary Travers, and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary share a laugh circa the early 1980's. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Peter, Paul and Mary gained popularity after forming in 1961. The trio brought notoriety to folk music in America. Throughout the 1960s, the group released six Billboard Top 10 singles, two No. 1 albums and won five Grammys.

Yarrow, Stookey and Travers took an eight-year hiatus to focus on their individual careers, but reunited in 1978 for an anti-nuclear-power concert. "Survival Sunday" was organized by Yarrow in Los Angeles. The moment brought the trio back together until Travers' death in 2009. Since then, Stookey and Yarrow have performed both together and separately.

Peter, Paul and Mary formed in the 1960s. (Photo by Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images)

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Paul Stookey, Mary Travers and Peter Yarrow at The Greek Theatre in 1978. (Photo by Richard McCaffrey/ Michael Ochs Archive/ Getty Images)

The singer-songwriter was born in New York. Yarrow was introduced to music at a young age, first learning violin and then guitar. He later graduated from Cornell University in 1959.

"I saw these young people at Cornell who were basically very conservative in their backgrounds opening their hearts up and singing with an emotionality and a concern through this vehicle called folk music," he said. "It gave me a clue that the world was on its way to a certain kind of movement, and that folk music might play a part in it and that I might play a part in folk music."

Yarrow is survived by his wife, Marybeth, son Christopher, daughter Bethany and granddaughter Valentina.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.