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.