Stage-coach and Tavern Days

by Alice Morse Earle

Sign-board of
Williams Tavern.

Poor Mrs. Pye visited him, with much distress of spirit, and sympathized with him and grieved over him as he lay face downward on the stone floor. And it arouses a sense of amused indignation to know that he asked earnestly for Pye and expressed deep regret at having injured him—he wasn’t badly hurt, anyway. Our heroine, Dame Pye, certainly deserved a better and braver husband, and it is pleasant to know that she outlived Pye and found, if not a more courageous mate, certainly a very fine young one—her bar-keeper, forty years younger than herself.

The highwayman escaped the tree, for he died in jail. There is reason to believe he was a Southerner of good birth. The horse was so widely described and exploited that his story reached a Virginia gentleman, his real owner, from whom he had been stolen. The sagacious animal had been trained to follow a peculiar whistle, and to jump at anything. The gentleman proved his ownership and took the splendid animal-hero home.

In the year 1821 a highwayman was executed in Massachusetts, Mike Martin, or Captain Lightfoot, who really was a very satisfactory outlaw, a real hightoby-crack, though he was only an imported one, not a native production. His life, as given by himself, is most entertaining. He had to his father a Kilkenny Irishman, who apprenticed the boy early in life to his uncle, a brewer. The brewer promptly beat him, he ran home, and got a bigger beating. In truth, he was a most beatable brat. When sixteen years old he joined the Ribbonmen, a political organization that committed many petty crimes and misdemeanors, besides regulating landlords. When his father found out the kind of company kept by the young rascal, he beat him again. Mike promptly took as a salve five guineas from his father’s trunk, opening it with a master-key which had been kindly made for him by a Ribbonman, and which he was enjoined to keep constantly with him as a conveniency. He says, “I had always stolen in a small way.” With his five guineas he ran away to Dublin, and pretended reformation and remorse so successfully to a cousin that the latter employed him in a distillery. In return he stole petty amounts continually from his cousin’s money chest, by help of his master-key. Soon he was a settled outcast, and at this juncture met at an inn a fine, handsome clergyman, about forty years of age, over six feet tall, dark-eyed, of great muscle and strength; his name was John Doherty. In spite of his black clerical dress he seemed somewhat mysterious in character, and after pumping Martin he disclosed in turn that he was the famous highwayman, Captain Thunderbolt.

He at once claimed Martin as one of the real sort, and they were talking over a union of forces and schemes when a party of dragoons came to the inn in pursuit of Thunderbolt. He escaped through a window, but in a week’s time came back dressed as a Quaker and joined his companion, who at the age of twenty-one thus blossomed out as a real knight of the road, as Captain Lightfoot, with a pair of fine pistols and a splendid horse, “Down the Banks,” to keep company with Thunderbolt’s “Beefsteak.” Thus equipped, these two gentlemen rode as gentlemen should, to the hunt. There, alone, to prove what he could do, Mike Martin robbed four huntsmen, and to his pride was mistaken by them for Thunderbolt himself. But the huntsmen soon had their turn; sheriffs and soldiers drove the two knights to the woods; and after weeks of uncomfortable hiding Mike Martin was properly penitent and longed for an honest man’s seat in a tavern taproom. There is no retreat, however, in this career; the pair of robbers next entered a house, called all the people together, and robbed the entire trembling lot. Through Scotland and Ireland they rode till the highways got too hot for them, advertisements were everywhere, a hue and cry was out, and Thunderbolt fled to America.

Mike Martin, terrified at the multiplying advertisements and rewards, disguised himself, and sailed for New York. Quarrels and mutiny on shipboard brought him ashore at Salem, where he worked for a time for Mr. Derby. He soon received a sum of money from his father’s estate and set up as a brewer. But Salem Yankees were too sharp for the honest highwayman, and he lost it all and had to take again to the road. From Portsmouth to Canada,—from pedlers, from gentlemen,—on horseback, in chaises,—he ran his rig; finally, in spite of advertisements in newspapers and printed reports and handbills at every country inn, he worked his way back to New Hampshire; and on a moonlight night he found himself horseless in the bushes. Two men rode up, and one held back as Mike Martin stepped forth. “Who’s that?” said the foremost man. “I’m the bold Doherty from Scotland,” said he, taking Thunderbolt’s name and not in vain. “And what are you after?” said the shaking traveller. “Stop and I’ll show you.” Mike then presented his pistol and demanded of the gentleman his money or his life. Promptly money and papers were turned over. “Stand back by the fence,” said the highwayman. “Here, Jack, look after this fellow,” he swaggered to make the traveller think he had an accomplice; and he mounted the fine horse and rode off. He robbed some one in some way every few miles on the road till he was back in Salem. There he promptly acquiesced to the decorous customs of the New England town, and went to a lecture; on his way home from his intellectual refreshment, he asked the time of a well-dressed man. “Can’t you hear the clock strike?” was the surly answer. “I’ll hear your watch strike or strike your head,” was the surprising reply. Out came watch and money with the cowardly alacrity ever displayed at his demands. From thence to the Sun Tavern in Boston, where he learned of a grand party at Governor Brooks’s at Medford. He said in his confession, “I thought there might be some fat ones there and decided to be of the company.” After an evening of astonishing bravado and recklessness, displaying himself at taverns and on the road, he held up Major Bray and his wife on the Medford turnpike, near the Ten Mile Farm which once belonged to Governor Winthrop. The gentlefolk were in “a genteel horse and chaise.” Madam Bray began to try to conceal her watch-chain, but Captain Lightfoot politely told her he never robbed ladies. Major Bray turned over his watch and pocketbook, but begged to keep his papers. Martin said later, “The circumstances as given by Major Bray at the trial were correct, only he forgot to state that he was much frightened and trembled like a leaf.” After stopping other chaises, he took the surprisingly foolhardy step of going to the tavern at Medford, where he found already much excitement about the robbery of Major Bray, and met many suspicious glances. He rode off, and soon a crowd was after him crying, “Stop Thief.”

Poore Tavern and Sign-board.

In his mad flight his stirrup broke, he fell from his horse and dislocated his shoulder; thence through fields and marshes on foot till he dropped senseless from pain and fatigue. When he recovered, he tied his suspenders to a tree at one end and the other end to his wrist and pulled the shoulder into place. Then by day and night through farms and woods to Holliston. In the taproom of the tavern he called for brandy, but he saw such a good description of himself with a reward for his capture, while he was drinking off his glass, it took away his appetite for the dinner he had ordered.

He was then tired of foot travel, and stole a horse and rode to Springfield. Here he put up at a tavern, where he slept so sound that he was only awakened by landlord, sheriff, and a score of helpers who had traced the horse to Springfield. Major Bray’s robbery was unknown there, but he was tried for it, however, when it was found out, on October 21, and convicted and sentenced to death. He cheerfully announced that he should escape if he could, but he was put in heavy irons. When in jail at Lechmere Point he struck the turnkey, Mr. Coolidge, on the head with his severed chain. He pushed past the stunned keeper, thrust open the door, and ran for his life. He was captured in a cornfield and Coolidge was the man who grabbed him. It was found that he had filed through the chain with a case-knife, filled the cut with a paste of tallow and coal-dust, and though the link had been frequently examined the cut had never been noted. He declared he would have escaped, only the heavy chain and weight which he had worn had made him lose the full use of his legs, and he had to run with one end of the chain and a seventeen-pound weight in his hand.