the higher courts were to be appointed during good behavior, instead of
seven years. The Bill of Rights re-enacted the old Provincial provision
copied into the first Constitution, respecting freedom of worship and
the rights of conscience. The Council of Censors ceased to have
authority and Pennsylvania conformed in all important matters to the
system upon which the new Federal Government was to be administered.
The first election held under the Constitution of the Commonwealth, that
of 1790, resulted in the choice of Thomas Mifflin, the president of the
convention, which made, adopted and proclaimed the Constitution, for
Governor. He served three terms.
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David Lewis, Robber and Counterfeiter,
Born March 25, 1790
David Lewis was the most notorious robber and counterfeiter in this
country a little more than a century ago.
He was born at Carlisle, March 25, 1790, of poor, but respectable
parents, being one of a large family of children. The father died when
David was less than ten years old, and the widow had a hard struggle to
raise her family. Be it said to the credit of David that he remained
with her and assisted in raising the family until he was seventeen years
old. Then he worked at different occupations in and about Bellefonte
until he enlisted in the army.
During this service he was punished by a sergeant for some offense and
deserted, only to re-enlist a few months later, as a private in Captain
William N. Irvine’s company of light artillery, under an assumed name.
By this time he had formed vicious habits and he immediately planned to
decamp with his bounty money, but he was discovered as a former
deserter. The War of 1812 was imminent and discipline rigid, so that the
sentence of his court martial was death. Through the efforts of his
distressed mother, his sentence was commuted to imprisonment in a guard
house, secured by ball and chain.
He served only one week of this sentence, for he then made his escape
and safely reached a cave on the banks of the Conodoguinet Creek, less
than two miles from Carlisle. The very night he arrived in this favorite
haunt Lewis began his long and varied career of robbery and lawlessness.
This cave and another on Little Chickies Creek near Mount Joy, Lancaster
County, were the storehouses for the major portion of the ill-gotten
loot of Lewis and his gang.
The first victims of Lewis were the country banks, but recently
established and whose bank notes were easy to counterfeit. Lewis was
quick to make the most of this condition. He journeyed to Vermont and
there made enormous quantities of spurious bank bills, purporting to
have been issued from banks in Philadelphia and various Pennsylvania
towns. These were successfully passed in New York.
Lewis was captured and committed to jail at Troy, from which he soon
escaped, with the assistance of the jailer’s daughter, who fled with him
and became his wife. His devotion to her was so genuine that it is
strange her influence did not prove sufficient for him to have become a
valuable member of society instead of one of the worst criminals on
record.
Lewis was a man of unusual physical strength, handsome, and possessed a
most pleasing personality. He was conscious of that fact, and made many
friends, not in crime, but those who would aid him in making escape or
give him timely warning. The story is told of Nicholas Howard, a
prominent landlord near Doubling Gap, who would display a flag from a
certain upper window when the coast was clear, and Lewis was thus
advised of the movements of the officers seeking his apprehension. Food
was often carried to him in his hiding place by those who never
suspected they were befriending an outlaw.
A Mr. Black, of Cumberland, Md., related a personal adventure with Lewis
in the Allegheny Mountains. Black had crossed the mountain on horseback
to Brownsville, where he collected a large sum of money. He rode a
speedy black horse. While in Brownsville he won another horse in a race
and the following day started home, riding the new horse, leading his
own “Blacky.”
In a lonely ravine a man suddenly appeared and jumped on Blacky’s back
and rode alongside Black and began to barter for the horse. The horse
was not for sale and they rode together until a spring was reached,
where they dismounted and quenched their thirst and ate a bite and drank
some peach brandy. By the time a second spring was reached Black and his
new-found companion were on intimate terms. The stranger asked Black if
he had ever seen Lewis, about whom there was so much fear and
excitement. He replied that he had not.
“Well, sir,” replied the stranger, jumping to his feet, “here is Lewis—I
am the man.”
Black further stated that Lewis told him he had seen the race in
Brownsville and knew he had collected much money there, and that he had
preceded him to waylay and rob him, but that Black had treated him like
a gentleman and he would not harm him or take a cent from his pocket.
At another time when a large searching party in Adams County in pursuit
of Lewis met a well-dressed stranger on horseback, they asked him if he
had “seen or heard anything of Lewis, the robber.” He replied that he
had not and joined in the pursuit. Later he had the audacity to send a
letter stating that they had been riding with Lewis, and he was anxious
to learn if they had thought him an agreeable companion.
One of the best of his exploits took place in Mifflin County. Having
failed in the execution of some plots to rob several wealthy farmers,
his ready cash uncomfortably low, he set out to replenish his finances.
Coming across a fine, large house that stood back from the highway, he
knocked at the door, which was opened by an elderly woman of respectable
appearance. Lewis, to ascertain where her money was kept, asked her to
change a five dollar note.
“That I am not able to do,” replied the woman, “for I am unfortunate and
have not a dollar in the house, and what is worse,” she added
despondently, as she caught sight of a man coming through the woods
toward the house, “there comes the constable to take my cow for the last
half-year’s rent. I don’t know what to do without her.”
“How much do you owe?” inquired Lewis, hurriedly.
“Twenty dollars, sir,” answered the woman.
“Have you no one to help you?” inquired Lewis.
“No one,” she replied.
“Then I will,” said the robber, as he drew from his pocket the exact
sum. “Pay that fellow his demand and be sure to take his receipt, but
don’t say anything about me.”
Lewis had just time to make his escape, unobserved, when the constable
arrived and proceeded to drive away the widow’s cow, but she rushed
forward, paid him the money and took his receipt.
He immediately set out upon his return, but had not proceeded far, when
Lewis bounded into the road and greeted him as follows:
“How d’ye do, stranger? Got any spare change about you?”
“No,” answered the frightened constable.
“Come, shell out, old fellow, or I’ll save you the trouble,” retorted
Lewis, as he presented his pistol. This argument convinced the worthy
official that the stranger meant business and he quickly handed over his
money.
Lewis got back his twenty dollars and forty dollars in addition. He
often afterward boasted that the loan of that twenty to the widow was
one of the best investments he ever made.
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More Exploits of Lewis, the Robber—Conclusion
of Yesterday’s Story, March 26
Yesterday’s story was a brief outline of the early life of David Lewis,
the robber and counterfeiter, and in this will be told those events
which followed and ended in his death.
In 1818, Dr. Peter Shoenberger, owner of the Huntingdon Furnace, in
Huntingdon County, had made extensive shipments of iron to Harper’s
Ferry and prepared to cross the mountains to receive his pay. Lewis and
his band knew of this proposed trip and determined to waylay and rob
him. The sum to be collected amounted to more than $13,000, and the
ironmaster’s credit would be ruined if this sum was not in deposit in
Bellefonte by a certain date.
While they were scheming to rob Shoenberger news reached them that their
victim was returning home by way of the Cumberland Valley and
Harrisburg.
When Lewis and his gang arrived at Harrisburg they learned that the
doctor, warned of their designs, had again changed his route, but the
highwaymen knew the country and soon got in advance of their victim. In
the early hours of the morning, a few miles east of Bellefonte, the
doctor was confronted by a large man on horseback, who, with a pistol in
hand, ordered him to “stand and deliver.”
The doctor was in a dilemma; he faced financial ruin or loss of life. As
he reached for his saddlebag he heard a shout and at the same time saw
the top of a Conestoga wagon reaching the top of the hill. The wagoners
were encouraging their horses as the doctor yelled in desperation, “Men,
I am being robbed. Help! Help!”
Lewis snapped his pistol, but it failed to discharge. Connelly, a mate
of Lewis, rode up and would have killed the doctor, but for Lewis. A
shot by one of the wagoners struck Connelly in the shoulder, but he and
Lewis escaped in the woods.
During his operations in New York City Lewis formed a partnership with
other noted crooks. Each one signed an ironclad compact with blood drawn
from the veins of each member as they formed in a circle, while Lewis
held a basin to receive the blood of each, which was used as ink.
Lewis knew that Mrs. John Jacob Astor was to attend a well-advertised
auction sale, where she made many purchases of rare laces and jewelry,
placing them in a reticule, which she kept on a bench close by her side.
While she was engaged in conversation, Lewis stole the bag and made his
escape. He failed to divide the plunder with the gang, but gave it all
to his wife, barely escaping their wrath.
Lewis headed for Princeton, where, he said, he found “empty heads and
full purses.” He succeeded in fleecing many of the students of all the
money they had or could obtain.
His next exploits were in Philadelphia, where he was the leader of a
band which attempted to decoy Stephen Girard out of the city into the
country, to keep him in confinement until forced to purchase his
freedom. They also planned to dig a tunnel from the Dock Street sewer to
Girard’s banking house, where they intended to reach the bank vaults
from below. The dangerous illness of Lewis’ daughter caused a delay in
these plans, his gang drifted apart, and the scheme was abandoned.
He then drove a team in the United States Army, where he robbed officers
and men. When he received his pay for his services and for his
employer’s teams and wagons, he stole the entire proceeds and left for
Western Pennsylvania, where he was most active and successful in his
nefarious pursuit.
His wife died about this time and his grief was so genuine that he
almost changed his mode of life, but soon fell in with another gang and
for some time devoted his attention to making and circulating spurious
money. He was caught passing bad money and arrested at Bedford and
sentenced to the penitentiary, from which he was pardoned by Governor
Findlay.
Lewis and his band robbed a Mr. McClelland, who was riding from
Pittsburgh to Bedford. Lewis saved McClelland’s life when Connelly
insisted on shooting him, saying “Dead men tell no tales.” Lewis was
again caught and confined in the Bedford jail. He not only escaped, but
he set free all the convicts who entered in the plan with him, leaving
behind “an ordinary thief who had robbed a poor widow. Such a thief
should remain in jail and pay the price,” wrote Lewis in his confession.
Lewis and Connelly made a trip through York and Cumberland Counties
robbing wealthy German farmers. A well-laid plot to rob a wealthy Mr.
Bashore was frustrated through the presence of mind and bravery of his
wife, who blew a horn to alarm the neighborhood, as Lewis confessed,
“displaying as much courage as any man and more resolution than any
woman I had met with.”
On several occasions he was known to have risked capture, and even his
life, just to spend a few hours with his mother, whom he dearly loved.
Lewis learned that a wagon load of merchandise belonging to Hamilton and
Page, of Bellefonte, was expected to pass through the Seven Mountains.
He and his gang quickly planned and successfully executed this robbery,
and immediately thereafter made a rich haul from the store of General
James Potter, in Penn’s Valley near the Old Fort.
Lewis was a shrewd mountaineer and smart as a steel trap, but like all
such criminals of his daring was sure to meet his fate. Even though
frequently arrested and confined in jail, none was strong enough to hold
him. He never served a sentence in a single institution.
After the robbery of General Potter’s store, Lewis and Connelly started
for Sinnemahoning, meeting at the house of Samuel Smith, where they
participated in shooting at a mark, and mingled in the crowd. Lewis and
Connelly were recognized and their surrender demanded as rewards were
everywhere offered for their arrest. Connelly opened fire, killing one
of the captors.
Lewis, never having taken life, snapped his pistol in the air, but the
fire was returned in earnest, Lewis being shot in the right arm and
Connelly in the hip. The latter was found hiding in a tree top. Lewis
and Connelly were loaded in canoes and taken down the river to Great
Island, now Lock Haven, where three physicians attended them. Connelly
died that night. Lewis was removed, as soon as his wounds would permit
to Bellefonte jail, where he died a month later, July 13, 1820.
Thus a sad commentary in the life of Lewis, the Robber, that the only
jail from which he failed to escape was the Bellefonte bastile, and
while there his wounds were of such a nature he could not plan nor did
he desire to escape, but he often told his jailer he could easily get
away any hour he pleased.
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Bethlehem Hospital Base During Revolution,
Moved March 27, 1777
Bethlehem was the seat of a general hospital twice during the Revolution
and during the six years from 1775 to 1781, it was a thoroughfare for
Continental troops. Heavy baggage and munitions of war and General
Washington’s private baggage were stored in the town and guarded by 200
Continentals under command of Colonel William Polk, of North Carolina,
while many houses were occupied by American troops and British prisoners
of war. The Continental Congress found refuge there when on its flight
from Philadelphia.
The inhabitants of Bethlehem, therefore, witnessed not only the horrors
and experienced the discomforts of war, but also its “pomp and
circumstance,” for at times there were sojourning among them Generals
Washington, Lafayette, Greene, Knox, Sterling, Schuyler, Gates,
Sullivan, De Kalb, Steuben, Pulaski and Arnold, with members of their
staffs, and General Charles Lee’s division of the army in command of
General Sullivan was encamped opposite the town.
The population of Bethlehem in those stirring days was about 500 souls,
principally Moravians. The “Church Store,” on Market Street, was well
stocked and spacious; in its cellars were stored supplies for the
hospital and in the dwelling part sick and wounded soldiers found
desirable quarters.
The dwelling of Thomas Horsfield was nearby. He was a hero of the French
and Indian War, a colonel of the Provincial forces and a magistrate.
Many refugees from Philadelphia and New York were provided a temporary
home by the old veteran. Beyond, to the west, resided William Boehler,
where Captain Thomas Webb, the founder of Methodism in America, and a
British prisoner of war with his family of seven persons, were
comfortably accommodated.
On what is now Main Street, and north of the “Brethren House,” stood the
“Family House,” for married people, in which were confined more than 200
British prisoners, whose guard of 100 Continentals were quartered in the
water works building. When they marched for Reading and Lancaster, the
surgeons of the hospital occupied the building.
Farther up the thoroughfares were the farm buildings and dwelling of
Frederick Boeckel, the farmer general of the Moravian estates, where
Lafayette, after being wounded at Brandywine, was tenderly nursed to
convalescence by Dame Barbara Boeckel and her pretty daughter, Liesel.
The last house overlooking the Valley of the Monocacy was the Sun Inn, a
hostelry unsurpassed in the Colonies, and surely none other entertained
and sheltered so many of the patriots of the American Revolution.
The Single Brethren’s House now the middle building of the Moravian
Seminary and College for Women, which has weathered the storms of more
than 175 years, was twice during the Revolution occupied as a general
hospital, the first time from December, 1776, to April, 1777, and for
the last time from September, 1777, to April, 1778. The cornerstone of
this large building was laid April 1, 1748.
The Americans were defeated at Long Island in August, 1776, when
Washington withdrew his troops to New York City, which a few days later
fell into the hands of the enemy. This loss was quickly followed by that
of Fort Washington and Fort Lee, when Washington crossed the North River
into New Jersey, and continued his retreat to Trenton, in which he was
closely pursued by Cornwallis. It was at this crisis that the general
hospital, in which more than 1,000 sick and wounded were living, was
removed from Morristown to Bethlehem.
On December 3, 1776, Dr. Cornelius Baldwin rode up to the clergy house
and delivered to Reverend John Ettwein an order from General John
Warren, general hospital surgeon, which stated that General Washington
had ordered the General Hospital to Bethlehem and directed the Moravian
brethren to put their buildings in condition for the reception of the
invalids and he doubted not “but you will act upon this occasion as
becomes men and Christians.”
Toward evening Drs. William Shippen and John Warren arrived and made
arrangements with Reverend Ettwein for the reception of 250 of the sick.
During the ensuing two days the invalids, in charge of their surgeons,
commenced to arrive. Their suffering from exposure and improper
transportation made them pitiable objects to behold and two died before
they were removed from the wagons. Food was scarce and the Moravians
relieved their distress from their own supplies. Some of the sick were
taken to Easton and Allentown.
On December 7 two deaths occurred and a site for a cemetery was selected
on the bluff on the west bank of the Monocacy Creek.
The Moravians constantly attended the sick and Mr. Ettwein visited the
patients daily. In February smallpox was brought to the hospital by some
soldiers, but an epidemic was averted. On March 27, 1777, the hospital
was transferred to Philadelphia.
During the time the hospital was in Bethlehem more than 100 died,
coffins for whom were made by the Moravian carpenters, who also dug the
graves and served at the burial of the deceased patriots.
Again when the Continental army failed to defend Philadelphia, the
hospital was removed to Bethlehem. On September 13, 1777, Washington
ordered all military stores of the army, in 700 wagons to Bethlehem. The
Church bells of Philadelphia, with the Liberty Bell, were also
transported to Bethlehem en route to Allentown. Again the Moravians were
directed to prepare their buildings for hospital use and September 20,
the sick and wounded began to arrive, among them Lafayette and Colonel,
later General John Armstrong, of Carlisle. On the twenty-second the
archives and money of Congress, under an escort, arrived.
On October 7 the wounded from the Battle of Germantown began to arrive
and in a fortnight 450 patients were being treated. A rain lasting six
days set in and the suffering was indescribable. The Moravians furnished
many blankets and much clothing for the destitute soldiers. During
December many sick soldiers were brought to Bethlehem from hospitals in
New Jersey. The loss was enormous due to lack of proper facilities with
which to treat the patients, and the mortality during eight months and
ten days was 120.
Among the surgeons from Pennsylvania were William Shippen, Jr., John
Morgan, Thomas Bond, Jr., William Smith, Bodo Otto, Aquila Wilmot, James
Houston, S. Halling and Francis Allison, Jr.
On August 28, 1778, the remaining sixty-five patients were removed to
Lancaster and Yellow Springs, and Bethlehem ceased to be a hospital base
during the war.
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Flight of Tory Leaders from Pittsburgh,
March 28, 1778
General Edward Hand, the commandant at Fort Pitt, had failed in two
expeditions, and the resultant effect was disastrous to the American
cause on the border, especially in the spring of 1778. During the
previous winter the British, under General Howe, had occupied
Philadelphia, the capital of the colonies; the Continental Congress had
been driven to York, and Washington’s Army, reduced to half-naked and
half-starved condition, had suffered in camp at Valley Forge, so there
was not much to win adherents to the cause of liberty among those
otherwise inclined.
Governor Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, sent many agents,
red and white, to penetrate the border settlements to organize the
Tories into effective military units. In February and March, 1778, a
daring and shrewd British spy visited Pittsburgh and carried on his
plotting against the colonies almost under the nose of General Hand.
Most of the Tories of this neighborhood were at the house of Alexander
McKee, at what is now called McKees Rocks. Another place of assembly was
at Redstone, where a British flag flew nearly all of that winter.
Captain Alexander McKee, the Tory leader at Pittsburgh, was an educated
man of wide influence on the frontier. He had been an Indian trader and
for twelve years prior to the Revolution had been the King’s deputy
agent for Indian affairs at Fort Pitt. For a short time he had been one
of the justices of the peace for Westmoreland County, and he was
intimately acquainted with most of the Indian chiefs. In 1764 he
received a grant of 1,400 acres of land from Colonel Henry Bouquet, at
the mouth of Chartier’s Creek, and he divided his time between his house
in Pittsburgh and his farm at McKees Rocks.
In the spring of 1776, McKee was discovered to be in correspondence with
the British officers in Canada, and he was put on his parole not to give
aid or comfort to the enemies of American liberty, and not to leave the
vicinity of Pittsburgh without the consent of the Revolutionary
Committee.
In February, 1778, General Hand had reason to suspect that McKee had
resumed his relations and correspondence with the British authorities
and ordered the captain to go to York and report himself to the
Continental Congress. For a time McKee avoided compliance, on plea of
illness, but unable to further delay, he contrived to escape to Detroit
and there openly ally himself with the British cause.
About a year before this a young trader, Matthew Elliott, who understood
the Shawnee language, had been employed by the Americans to carry
messages from Fort Pitt to the Shawnee and other Indian tribes to the
westward, in the interest of peace. On one of his missions he was
captured by hostile savages and carried to Detroit, where, after a short
imprisonment, he had been released on parole.
He returned to Pittsburgh via Quebec, New York and Philadelphia, all
then in British possession. He had been impressed by the show of British
power in the East, in contrast to the miserable conditions of the
American forces, especially along the frontier. He became convinced that
the colonists would fail in the Revolution, and on his return to
Pittsburgh got into communication with Captain McKee and others of the
Tory party.
Elliott was suspected of having poured into McKee’s ears the wild tale
that he was to be waylaid and killed on his journey to York. McKee heard
such a story and believed it, which decided him to escape from Fort Pitt
and go to Detroit.