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.