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.
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.
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.
The flight of the Tories took place from Alexander McKee’s house during the night of March 28, 1778. General Hand received a hint of this move early in the evening and dispatched a squad of soldiers to McKee’s house Sunday morning to remove McKee to Fort Pitt. The soldiers arrived too late. The members of the little party who had fled into Indian land in that rough season were Captain McKee, his cousin, Robert Surphlit; Simon Girty, Matthew Elliott, a man of the name of Higgins, and two Negro slaves belonging to McKee.
Simon Girty was a Pennsylvanian, who had been captured by the Indians when eleven years old, kept in captivity for three years by the Seneca, and afterward employed at Fort Pitt as an interpreter and messenger. He had served the American cause faithfully. He then became the most notorious renegade and Tory in Pennsylvania.
The Tories in their flight made their way through the woods to the Delaware town Coshocton, where they tarried several days endeavoring to incite the tribe to rise against the colonists. Their efforts were thwarted by Chief White Eyes, who declared his friendship for the “buckskins” as he called the Americans, and he proved his sincerity until his death.
Chief White Eyes and Captain Pipe, an influential chief, debated in the Coshocton council on the advocacy of war, White Eyes pleading the cause of peace. The oratory of White Eyes carried the day and the seven Tories departed to the Shawnee towns on the Scioto, where they were welcomed. Many of the Shawnee were already on the warpath, and all were eager to hear the arguments of their friend McKee. James Girty, a brother of Simon, was then with the Shawnee tribe, having been sent from Fort Pitt by General Hand on a futile peace mission. He had been raised among the Shawnee, was a natural savage and at once joined his brother and the other Tories.
When Governor Hamilton heard of the flight of Captain McKee and his companions from Fort Pitt, he dispatched Edward Hazle to the Scioto to conduct the renegades safely through the several Indian tribes to Detroit. Hamilton, as would be expected, received them cordially and gave them commissions in the British service. For sixteen years McKee, Elliott and the Girtys were the merciless scourges of the border. They were the instigators and leaders of many Indian raids, and their intimate knowledge of the frontier rendered their operations especially effective. Long after the close of the Revolution they continued their deadly enmity to the American cause and were largely responsible for the general Indian war of 1790–94.
McKee and his associate renegades left behind them at Fort Pitt a band of Tories who had planned to blow up the fortress and escape in boats at night. In some way the scheme was frustrated just in time, probably by the confession of one of the conspirators, and the disaster averted. A score of the traitors escaped in boats during the night, and fled down the Ohio River. On the following day they were pursued and overtaken near the mouth of the Muskingum. Eight of the runaways escaped to the shore and were lost in the trackless woods; some were killed in the conflict which then occurred and the others were taken back as prisoners to Fort Pitt.
Two were shot, another hanged and two were publicly whipped on the parade ground of the fort. The punishment of these men was almost the last act performed by General Hand before he was relieved by General Lachlan McIntosh, but it put an end to the machinations of the Tories at Pittsburgh.