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Battle of Saratoga

Bathsheba Spooner, Hanged for Murder—Or For Her Loyalist Father?

In March of 1778, a traveler brought strange news to Sandwich, Mass., about an unnatural murder in Brookfield. A woman had hired two Russians to kill her husband. The woman turned out to be well-known in Sandwich: Bathsheba Spooner, daughter of a notorious Loyalist.

She had moved away from the Cape Cod town with her family as eight-year-old Bathsheba Ruggles. At 20, she married a prosperous farmer in Brookfield, Joshua Spooner.

Newcomb Tavern, Birthplace of Bathsheba Spooner

Twelve years later, her 17-year-old lover and two deserters from the British Army – Hessians, not Russians – beat Joshua Spooner to death. Then they shoved his body head-first down a well. Bathsheba Spooner went to trial for inciting the men to kill her husband.

She was sentenced to hang, along with her co-conspirators. But Bathsheba was pregnant. Which raised a question: Did her unborn child pay for the sins of his Loyalist grandfather?

Bathsheba Spooner

She was born on Feb. 13, 1745 in the Newcomb Tavern on Grove Street.

Her father, Timothy Ruggles, had gone from guest at the tavern to landlord, as he had married the widow Newcomb. They had six children. The Newcomb Tavern became a hotbed of Loyalist sentiment, and its patrons often clashed with the patriots in town.

Timothy Ruggles then moved the family to a farm in a new town called Hardwick, Mass. There he served as chief judge of the common pleas court in Worcester. Young John Adams, who studied law in Worcester, admired him. “His honor is strict . . . People approached him with dread and terror,” wrote Adams.

Timothy Ruggles

At six feet tall, Ruggles had a commanding presence and an outsize personality. He graduated from Harvard, practiced law and rose to brigadier general in the French and Indian War. He also won a number of elections to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, including as speaker from 1762 to 1764.

As patriots began agitating against the Crown, Timothy Ruggles led the Loyalist cause in New England. He founded the Loyal American Association, which vowed to enforce obedience to the King. The group also pledged resistance to the rebels and to use force to retaliate if harmed.

Unhappy Marriage

Ruggles influenced Bathsheba, his favorite daughter, to marry Joshua Spooner. He reasoned the union would cement her social position in town. Spooner could provide for her with an elegant home and fine clothing on his large farm in nearby Brookfield, Mass.

Winthrop Chandler, ‘The Homestead of General Timothy Ruggles’

But Bathsheba’s marriage to Joshua Spooner did not go well. She was pretty and intelligent, but “her passions had never been properly restrained.” Later in court, witnesses testified her husband was weak, easily intimidated and unable to sustain “a manly importance as the head of the family.” Others described him as an abusive drunk who slept with the servants when Bathsheba turned him away. Though they had four children, she had an “utter aversion” to him.

Meanwhile, her patriotic neighbors shunned her. They viewed her father as a leading traitor, and they suspected she agreed with him. John Adams, exaggerating a bit, wrote that the “whole continent” viewed Timothy Ruggles with “utter contempt and derision.”

In 1774, patriots attacked Ruggles’ farm and poisoned his cattle. Threatened wherever he went, Ruggles finally took refuge in British-occupied Boston. Eventually he fled to Nova Scotia, and Massachusetts confiscated his property.

Bathsheba, who adored her father, found herself isolated in Brookfield with a husband she hated. Some people thought her quite mad.

Infidelity

One day in March 1777, a handsome, 16-year-old Continental Army soldier, Ezra Ross, met Bathsheba while traveling home to Ipswich, Mass. He had completed his enlistment after fighting with Washington in New York and Trenton. He had suddenly taken ill in Brookfield, and Bathsheba took him in and nursed him to health.

Ross returned to Brookfield in August on his way to support the patriots at Ticonderoga. Then, after the victory at Saratoga, Ross came again to the Spooner home. People saw him out riding with Bathsheba, nearly twice his age.

When Bathseba discovered Ezra had gotten her pregnant she made plans to get rid of her husband. She gave Ezra Ross a vial of nitric acid and told him to pour it into Spooner’s grog. But he didn’t do it.

Then in February 1778, two British deserters showed up in Brookfield. Sgt. James Buchanan and Pvt. William Brooks were among the many British soldiers who left the army during its arduous trek from Saratoga to Boston. There they were to leave for Britain.

With her husband away on business, Bathsheba brought the deserters into her home, offering them food, drink and rest. Increasingly desperate to kill her husband before he detected her pregnancy, she offered the soldiers $1,000 to do the deed. They said they would.

When Spooner came home he threw the soldiers out of his house. But Bathsheba hid them in the barn and continued to feed them. On March 1, 1777, Ezra Ross suddenly reappeared, and he agreed to help the soldiers kill her husband. That night, Joshua Spooner came home from Cooley’s Tavern and William Brooks attacked him in his dooryard, aided by Buchanan and Ross. They beat him to death and then threw his body down the well.

Apprehension and Trial

Bathsheba had planned to say Joshua got up in the middle of the night and fell into the well. But she had selected three very clumsy murderers. They left such evidence as Spooner’s battered hat, blood and footprints in the snow and a snowbank next to the well.

The three murderers fled to Worcester, where authorities apprehended them the next day. They wore Joshua Spooner’s clothing and carried Bathsheba’s money.

Robert Treat Paine

They confessed to the crime and went to prison. So did Bathsheba, though she never confessed.

The trial began on April 27 at the Old South Meeting House in Worcester

William Cushing presided, along with John Sullivan and David Sewall – patriots all. Robert Treat Paine, who had signed the Declaration of Independence, led the prosecution on behalf of the commonwealth.

Levi Lincoln, a relative of the 16^th president, defended Bathsheba on the grounds of insanity. “Many cool-headed contemporaries of Mrs. Spooner believed that she was beside herself when she committed the act for which she was tried,” wrote a distant relation, Samuel Swett Green, in 1888. Lincoln himself said he believed her insane.

Lincoln also pleaded with the jury to set aside “all political feeling.”

Bathsheba Spooner, Guilty

After 16 hours, the jury found all four guilty. Cushing set June 4 as the date for them to hang. In late May, Bathsheba begged the court to delay her execution because of her pregnancy. Cushing relented and moved the date to July 2. Then began a series of examinations to determine if the child had quickened in her womb. Panels of midwives did not agree.

William Cushing

Five thousand people watched the four murderers hang on July 2. John Avery, secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Council, signed the warrant of execution. Avery also happened to be Joshua Spooner’s step-brother and an ardent patriot who hated Timothy Ruggles.

With the noose around her neck, she took the sheriff’s hand and uttered her final words: “My dear Sir, I am ready. In a little time I expect to be in bliss and but a few years must elapse when I hope I shall see you and my other friends.” An autopsy revealed a five-month male fetus.

Bathsheba’s sister Martha Green buried Spooner in the Brookfield cemetery and Bathsheba on the Green estate in Worcester.

Monument to Timothy Ruggles in Middleton, Nova Scotia

Timothy Ruggles died in Nova Scotia at the age of 82 in 1793.

Images: Monument to Timothy Ruggles By Hantsheroes – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37862735.

With thanks to The Most Extraordinary Murder, by Chaim M. Rosenberg for the Journal of the American Revolution, Sept. 20, 2018. This story was updated in 2023.

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Benedict Arnold’s Treason Unmasked to Washington—in Arnold’s Own House

George Washington learned about Benedict Arnold’s treason while staying at Benedict Arnold’s house near West Point. He wondered why Arnold, his best battlefield commander, wasn’t there. As he was getting ready for dinner, Alexander Hamilton brought him the news.

Arnold had vanished moments before Washington rode up to the sprawling mansion along the Hudson River. He had received a letter telling him that Washington knew, or would soon know, that the jig was up. The Americans had arrested a suspicious person with incriminating evidence in Arnold’s handwriting, the letter said.

Benedict Arnold

Arnold had received the dispatch over breakfast with two of Washington’s aides. They had gone to Arnold’s house ahead of the rest of the commander-in-chief’s entourage. Arnold had excused himself and gone somewhere on urgent business–to the fort, he told them.

They never saw him again.

Benedict Arnold’s Treason

Benedict Arnold’s treason stemmed from a web of motives. They included a desire to avenge his honor, a measure of greed, painful and crippling battle wounds and the influence of his Loyalist wife.

By the time Washington showed up at his house, he had already given the British information about planned American troop movements.

He was born Jan. 14, 1741 in Norwich, Conn., into a once-prominent New England family. His great-grandfather, also Benedict Arnold, had served as governor of Rhode Island. His great-great-grandfather, William Arnold, had established King’s Chapel in Boston. Benedict Arnold spent his boyhood in affluence, but his alcoholic father then squandered all his money.

His father’s failure meant Arnold couldn’t attend Yale, and it also gave him a thirst for money and honor. He succeeded at merchant shipping and privateering, only to lose practically everything in the patriot cause. When he turned traitor he demanded £20,000 for his services.

Col. Benedict Arnold, before his promotion to general

He had served the cause valiantly, capturing Fort Ticonderoga, leading the expedition to Quebec, stopping a British invasion at the Battle of Valcour Island. Arnold had also helped drive the British from Connecticut and led American forces to victory at Saratoga.

His men loved him. Congress did not, passing him over for promotion in favor of junior—and less heroic — men. His nemesis, Gen. Horatio Gates, hadn’t even mentioned Arnold’s name in his report about the Battle of Saratoga.

Love of Money

Arnold’s love of money got him into trouble. While he recovered from severe wounds at Saratoga (add photo of boot), Washington appointed him military governor of Philadelphia. The British had recently evacuated, and he fell in love with 18-year-old Peggy Shippen, from a prominent Loyalist family. They married April 8, 1779.

Peggy Shippen Arnold

Peggy liked to live large, as did her husband, and they led an ostentatious lifestyle. Arnold engaged in war profiteering, which led to his court martial. Though acquitted on several counts, the court recommended a reprimand for several minor transgression. Washington sent him a letter chastising him as gently as he could, but Arnold — crippled, bitter and married to a Loyalist — had already put out feelers to the British.

Rationale

Benedict Arnold’s treason resulted from patriotic motive, or so he told himself—and, later, Washington. The war in 1780 wasn’t going well. Congress dithered and failed to provide for the Continental Army, which suffered from poor morale. Currency inflation started spinning out of control. The alliance with France hadn’t produced any victories. Then in May came the worst defeat of the war when Gen. Benjamin Lincoln and his 10,000 troops surrendered unconditionally in Charleston, S.C. Washington despaired.

George Washington, 1776

The British had also made overtures for peace, giving the Americans almost everything they wanted except for independence.

Arnold wasn’t the only one who considered changing sides. Charles Lee, captured by the British, shared with them a plan to defeat the Continental Army.

And Ethan Allen negotiated with the British on behalf of Vermont for a separate peace. He wanted to protect his extensive land holdings and the British offered to recognize Vermont as an independent state, part of the British Empire.

Had some things gone differently, perhaps Benedict Arnold’s treason wouldn’t have happened. He wanted a naval command. He had plenty of experience at sea, and he felt his wounds made him unfit for battle on land. But Washington didn’t see it that way.

West Point

He ended up finagling command of West Point, a key American position on the Hudson River. Upon his arrival on August 25, Arnold began to dismantle the fort’s defenses. He didn’t make needed repairs and he sent two cannons away, ostensibly to get refurbished. Then he sent 500 men off to cut wood and another 200 north to guard Fishkill, N.Y.

The Beverly Robinson house.

The Arnolds – Benedict, Peggy and baby Edward – moved into a house two miles down the Hudson from the fort and on the other side. The house had belonged to wealthy Loyalist Col. Beverly Robinson, who helped Arnold change sides.

Arnold had been begging the British for a meeting with their spymaster, Maj. John Andre. The first attempt failed. Then in late September Andre sailed up the Hudson on the sloop of war HMS Vulture. On the evening of September 21, Arnold sent two men in a boat to pick up Andre. They didn’t want to do it, but Arnold threatened to arrest them. They rowed out, picked up Andre and took him to shore, where Arnold waited with another horse. The two men talked at the Joshua Smith house in Haverstraw, N.Y. Meanwhile, Continental troops spied the Vulture and began bombarding the vessel, forcing it to move downriver.

John Andre

The Vulture’s departure stranded Andre. So Arnold gave him civilian clothes, a letter of transit under the assumed name John Anderson and intelligence about West Point. Andre’s superior officer, Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, had expressly told him not to do those three things.

Caught Out

Arnold returned to his headquarters on the banks of the Hudson. Two days later, he sat down to breakfast with Capt. Samuel Shaw and Maj. James McHenry.

They had been traveling with Washington and arrived in advance of the general’s expected visit that day. Washington had told them to go on ahead while he inspected redoubts along the way. But his entourage — including Henry Knox, Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette – stayed with Washington.

Arnold invited Shaw and McHenry to have breakfast with him while Peggy stayed upstairs with the baby. Then Lt. Solomon Allen arrived with a message for Arnold from Continental Army Col. John Jameson.

West Point from Phillipstown, 1831

Jameson wrote he found incriminating papers in the stocking of a suspicious person claiming to be John Anderson. He had sent the papers to Washington. Arnold realized they had captured Andre – “John Anderson” – and he would soon be unmasked.

As Arnold read the message he showed a moment of distress but quickly regained his composure. He excused himself and went outside to tell his servant to get a horse and alert his bargemen. Then he went upstairs to tell his wife he had to leave immediately to join the British. She fainted on the bed. Just then one of Washington’s light horsemen knocked on the bedroom door and told him Washington would arrive momentarily.

Col. John Jameson

Arnold then told his breakfast companions he had to go across the river to the fort to prepare for Washington’s visit. His horse didn’t await him, so he took the messenger’s horse. He galloped down to the river, where oarsmen waited to take him up the river to the fort. Or so they presumed.

Arnold ordered them downriver instead, offering them two gallons of rum each if they would row with all their might. When they approached the Vulture, he held up a white handkerchief. Arnold and the oarsmen boarded the vessel, and Arnold told them they were now prisoners. The men protested, but they were paroled when they arrived in New York.

Washington Finds Out

Moments after Arnold left, Washington rode up to the house. Told Arnold had gone to the fort, he ate a quick breakfast and went to the fort with Knox and Lafayette. Hamilton stayed behind in case any dispatches arrived. They agreed to meet back at the house for dinner, scheduled for 4 p.m.

Alexander Hamilton and Henry Knox

Washington expected a military salute when he approached the fort, but none came. Mystified, he was approached by the fort’s commandant, Col. John Lamb, who apologized for the inadequate reception. He hadn’t known Washington was coming.

Washington then asked to see Arnold. Lamb said he hadn’t showed up in two days. Washington then proceeded to inspect the fort, all the while asking about Arnold’s whereabouts.

When Washington, Knox and Lafayette returned to the Robinson house, they expected Mr. and Mrs. Arnold to greet them. But he had disappeared and she was still upstairs, indisposed. Washington went to his room to prepare for dinner when Hamilton handed him a sheaf of dispatches.

Washington then read the news of Arnold’s betrayal. He asked Hamilton and Lafayette to join him. “Arnold has betrayed us,” he said. “Whom can we trust now??

Theatre

Washington ordered Hamilton to gather some men to intercept Arnold downriver. Then Arnold’s aide, Lt. Col. Richard Varick, came to Washington’s room and told him Mrs. Arnold seemed to have gone mad.

Washington then went to see Peggy, who he had known since girlhood. Peggy Shippen Arnold put on quite a show for him, thrashing, crying and raving deliriously. She convinced Washington, and for many years historians, that she knew nothing of Benedict Arnold’s treason. Her feigned madness gave her husband more time to escape.

Washington believed Benedict Arnold’s treason had unhinged his wife. He let her alone for dinner, and told no one else of Arnold’s treason. “Mrs. Arnold is sick and General Arnold is away,” Washington said. “We must therefore take our dinner without them.”

They barely touched their meal. Arnold’s aides, Lt. Col. Richard Varick and Maj. David Franks, had figured out Benedict Arnold’s treason. They knew they were under suspicion and covertly watched Washington to suss out what he knew. Washington and his officers did the same to them. “Never was there a more melancholy dinner,” Lafayette said years later. “The General was silent and reserved, and none of us spoke of what we were thinking about.”

After dinner, Washington asked Varick to stop outside. He told him about Benedict Arnold’s treason. Then he said he had no reason to suspect him or Franks, but they must consider themselves under arrest.

Peggy Shippen

Peggy had flirted with Andre during the British occupation of Philadelphia. Within a month of her marriage, Arnold corresponded with Andre. Later, evidence of Peggy’s involvement in Benedict Arnold’s treason came to light. The British had paid her £350 for handling secret letters.

The President’s House, Philadelphia, where Arnold lived as military general

Washington received a letter from Arnold, telling him Peggy didn’t know he’d turned traitor, and asking him to grant her safe passage to her family in Philadelphia. Washington gave her a choice: She could join her husband in New York or her family in Philadelphia. She chose Philadelphia.

At the same time, Washington intended to punish Benedict Arnold. He organized an attempt to track him down in New York, one that nearly succeeded. Had Arnold been captured, he would have been summarily hanged.

Aftermath

Andre went to the gallows on Oct. 2. A court martial exonerated Franks and Varick.

The British gave Arnold the rank of brigadier general, and he led his forces on destructive rampages through Virginia and Connecticut. Peggy eventually joined him in New York. After Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, the Arnold family left for London.

A few years later, Arnold returned to North America, settling in Canada to speculate in land and start a merchant shipping business. The family then returned to London, where Benedict Arnold died in 1801 at the age of 60. Peggy died three years later at the age of 44.

In 1781, American agents a letter that said the British had paid only £5,000 for Benedict Arnold’s treason, not the £20,000 he had demanded. Franklin wrote to Lafayette, calling it “a miserable bargain especially when one considers the quantity of infamy he has acquired to himself and entailed on his family.”

With thanks to Benedict Arnold: How The Traitor Was Unmasked by James Thomas Flexner, American Heritage, 1967; The Life and Treason of Benedict Arnold by Jared Sparks, 1851. This story updated in 2023.

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Loyalists and Patriots: Mary Munro Sent Packing to Canada During the Revolution

During the American Revolution, Vermont was a battleground that pitted loyalists and patriots against each other, not just on the battlefield but in quiet communities like Shaftsbury.

Shaftsbury was the home of John and Mary Munro, a prosperous loyalist couple with at least seven children. They had moved from New York in 1767 and built an estate called Fowlis on land disputed by New York and New Hampshire.

John left Mary and seven children on the property while he went off to fight the American Revolution — on the British side. Patriots constantly harassed Mary. After they won the Battle of Saratoga, Mary fled through the wilderness to Canada. Though she survived and lived for another 38 years, she never fully recovered from her ordeal.

Loyalist John Munro

John Munro

John Munro, born in Scotland to a family of modest means, came to the colonies in 1756 as a Highland soldier. Stationed in Albany, he fought in the French and Indian war. For his service he received from New York a grant of land in Vermont, and he rose to wealth and local distinction. He may have had help from his wife, born Mary Brouwer, the daughter of a prominent Dutch couple in Schenectady, N.Y.

Appointed sheriff and chief magistrate in Shaftsbury, John Munro tried to enforce the land claims granted by New York. Unfortunately, those conflicted with the claims granted by New Hampshire.

John Munro tangled with the Green Mountain Boys over the disputed territory. He famously captured Remember Baker, a cousin of Ethan Allen, but the Green Mountain Boys rescued Baker from prison. One legend has it that Seth Warner struck Munro on the head with his sword, but Munro’s thick hair and skull broke Warner’s weapon.

Then as revolution loomed, fighting between the ‘Yorkers’ and the Green Mountain Boys evolved into fighting between loyalists and patriots.

Loyalists and Patriots

Loyalists get short shrift in American history books. But as historian W.S. MacNutt, wrote in an essay, The Loyalists: A Sympathetic View, “To the Loyalists the Revolution was the antithesis of modernity and freedom, a conspiracy of reckless and designing men to raise themselves from adversity to affluence, from public disfavor to high prominence.”

The New Hampshire grantees no doubt had designs on John Munro’s land, which included a manor house, 100 tenants, grain and lumber mills, a nail factory, an ashery and a pottery. Loyalists and patriots viewed each other with contempt.

When the Revolution broke out, Munro joined the 48^th Regiment of Foot, leaving Mary and the children behind. He recruited his own tenants and neighbors, and he spent his own money and farm stores to provision his troops. John Munro probably went off to war thinking the well-trained, well-equipped British Army would prevail over the patriots.

But as MacNutt noted, “To the amazement of many the conspiracy succeeded.”

In 1776, the patriots seized John Munro and imprisoned him in an Albany jail for 18 months. They sentenced him to hang, but he escaped to Canada in 1777.

Mary Munro

In the summer of 1777, the loyalists and patriots had both failed to gain military advantage. The French had not yet decided to join the patriots. Gen. John Burgoyne had taken command of the British forces and, stationed in Quebec, came up with an ambitious plan to end the war. He would lead his army south and cut New England off from the rest of the colonies. That, he believed, would make it easier to end the rebellion.

Meanwhile, the Vermont patriots seized the Munro estate and kept Mary and her children captive. They could stay in the house and keep two milk cows for the children, but otherwise they had little to eat. Mary sent an undated letter to her husband describing her dire straits.

“I am in a poor state of health and very much distresst. I must leave my house in a very short time, and God knows where I shall get a place to lay my head,” she wrote. “My own relations are my greatest enemies … The mills they have had a long time in their possession, likewise all your tenants’ lands and houses.’

Then in the fall of 1777, the patriots defeated Burgoyne during two battles in Saratoga, N.Y., just 35 miles from Shaftsbury. Burgoyne surrendered his army and, in the war’s turning point, the French decided to give the patriots military support.

Loyalists and patriots: Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga.

On the Run

Mary and her children had to flee. John Munro got permission for her to move to Canada, and she sold some silver plate she’d hidden to pay for the trip.

First she went to Schenectady, where her family (presumably patriots) refused to help her. Then she traveled toward Lake George to join other loyalists on their way to Canada. They decided to lighten their load by getting rid of their food and most of their clothes.

The Munros’ eldest daughter, Christiana, in 1795, years after the conflict between loyalists and patriots.

When they arrived at Lake George, they had to wait in the woods for six days, almost perishing of cold and hunger. Then three other families arrived, and together they persuaded the commanding officer at Fort Edward to give them a boat and a flag. A party of Indians discovered them and chased after them.

Mary and her children were ‘very sickly the whole winter’ after they arrived in Quebec. John Munro declared the children recovered. But, he wrote, “Mrs. Munro never will.”

Twenty years after her ordeal, her youngest son William wrote to his father. “For Gods sake keep a good store of nourishment in the house which is the only thing you can have to comfort you and my poor ailing Mother who has suffered so much for us all.”

Mary Munro outlived her husband by 15 years, however. They both died in Canada, he in 1800, she in 1815.

This story last updated in 2022.

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The Double Life of Railroad King (and Crook) Robert Schuyler

Robert Schuyler was one of the most respected men of his era, the last person likely to pull off one of the greatest swindles in Wall Street history. But in 1853, that’s exactly what Robert Schuyler did.

Robert Schuyler

He came from an illustrious family, grandson of Gen. Philip Schuyler, hero of the Battle of Saratoga, and nephew of Alexander Hamilton. His relatives included the landowning Beekmans and Van Rensselaers, New York nobility.

When the organizers of the new New York & New Haven Railroad went to look for a president, they chose Robert Schuyler because he represented the last word in respectability and financial responsibility.

Years later all hell broke loose when it turned out that he sold thousands of shares of bogus stock, kept three sets of books and stole $137,527.98.

“If Robert Schuyler is capable of such a wrong,” editorialized a newspaper, “then no one is to be trusted.”

But he was capable of such a wrong, one that ranked with the Bernie Madoff scandal.

Robert Schuyler

Robert Schuyler was born on Sept. 16, 1798 in Rhinebeck, N.Y., to an aristocratic family with vast semi-feudal landholdings in the Hudson Valley. A man of culture and refinement, he cofounded New York’s Union Club.

After graduating from Harvard, Robert Schuyler made the successful transition into commerce, starting his career with steamboats. By 1846 he and his brother George formed R. & G. L. Schuyler, an investment firm specializing in railroads.

At one time, Robert Schuyler served as president of five railroads, including the New York & New Haven Railroad, the Harlem, the Illinois Central, the Rensselaer & Saratoga and the Sangamon & Morgan Railroads. People called him the Railroad King.

The directors of the New York & New Haven completely entrusted the railroad’s financial affairs to him as president and sole transfer agent.

Disasters

In May of 1853, the New York & New Haven Railroad train plunged into Norwalk Harbor and killed about 50 people. The dramatic railroad derailment was by far the country’s worst.

Sketch of the Norwalk Railroad accident

President Robert Schuyler took a little bit of the blame for the disaster. The Connecticut Legislature, assuming Schuyler spread himself too thin, passed a law forbidding anyone to hold more than one railroad presidency at a time. He resigned several of his presidencies, putting his brother in charge of one.

Despite the tremendous loss of life, the Norwalk tragedy didn’t cause the railroad undue financial harm.

Then one year later, a second disaster struck the New York & New Haven when the stock prices began to plunge. In less than five weeks it dropped from $93 to $73.5, suggesting some insiders knew about the stock manipulation going on.

The railroad board tried to contact Robert Schuyler, who claimed he had fallen ill with a bad hemorrhage of the lungs. The New York Herald, though, on July 6, 1854 reported, “Mr. Schuyler has not been confined to his house by sickness lately….He has gone to Canada or some other cool place. New York was too hot to hold him.”

Robert Schuyler had, in fact, fled to France.

Swindler

Schuyler’s lawyer had already handed the railroad directors a letter of resignation. “Your attention to the stock ledgers of your Company is essential as you will find there is much that is wrong,” wrote Schuyler.

It turned out that Robert Schuyler, as sole transfer agent, had sold 19,540 shares in unauthorized stock certificates worth about $54 million today.

At first, the board thought Robert Schuyler had started selling bogus stock after the Norwalk accident. But then the directors learned he’d been doing it much earlier.

He had also maintained three sets of books kept by three different clerks, none of whom knew what the others were doing. He paid damage claims from the Norwalk accident by taking money from railroad accounts in cash and giving out notes signed by him as president.

Allston (New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad station)

Confusion reigned upon the discovery of the swindle because it was so hard to tell who held the bogus stock and who held genuine shares.

The first official meeting after the discovery of the fraud lapsed into chaos. Anyone who tried to be heard got shouted down by those demanding how many shares he held and where they came from. The meeting adjourned.

Stockholders did manage to elect a new slate of officers. And after 10 years of litigation, the court finally ruled that the railroad had to cover all losses.

Trouble Signs

How had people missed the signs of Robert Schuyler’s misdeeds? In hindsight, warning signs abounded.

The New York Herald had received an anonymous letter asking it to demand the board investigate Schuyler. But the paper ignored the letter because of its anonymous author.

And then there was Schuyler’s personal life. He had lived as a bachelor, but he had a family of six children by a woman he hadn’t married and who lived in a separate household. Then a minister proposed to his oldest daughter. To his horror, he discovered she was illegitimate. Robert Schuyler acceded to the minister’s demands and married the mother of his children.

Soon after the news broke about Schuyler’s swindle, the American Railroad Journal carried an editorial claiming not to be surprised. “His reputation for possessing business qualities of a high order, the influential circle in which he moved, and the unlimited confidence which he enjoyed, gave him a paramount voice in the management of numerous schemes, wrote the Journal.” But, it continued, ‘a blight always seemed to rest on everything he touched.’

In conclusion, the Journal had advised investors to stay away from railroad schemes in which Schuyler was involved. “…we took it for granted that he would rob any project of which he had control of whatever vitality he possessed.”

Death in Paris

Robert Schuyler supposedly died in France on Nov. 15, 1855, a little more than a year after the revelations about his mammoth swindle. But mystery surrounded his death as well. A classmate in 1857 wrote to the Harvard Librarian doubting that he had died. A coffin had arrived from France, and a funeral took place in New York, “but I could not find that anybody saw the body or identified it. It may have been a sham.”

With thanks to The Great Schuyler Stock Fraud by Robert B. Shaw and The Strange Case of Robert Schuyler by Sidney Withington.

Images: Allston station by Adam Moss via Flickr, CC By-SA 2.0.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Valcour Island, America’s Victorious Defeat on Lake Champlain

In the fall of 1776, a scrappy little patriot navy stymied an invasion by overwhelming British military forces during the Battle of Valcour Island. Led by Benedict Arnold, a frantically built flotilla kept alive the revolution — and the new nation — in a daring military maneuver.

The British planned to crush the rebellion by cutting New England off from the Mid-Atlantic states. Their superior forces would sail down the corridor of lakes from Canada to Albany and then join the British in New York. Arnold, a former sea captain, proposed building a fleet to guard that vital link. He wanted vessels that could maneuver better in Champlain’s shallow waters than the deepwater British warships.

Arnold’s Exploits

Arnold had spent the first year of the American Revolution harassing the British. In concert with Vermonter Ethan Allen, Arnold successfully took Fort Ticonderoga in May of 1775. Henry Knox then brought the artillery from Ticonderoga to Boston and in March George Washington used it to force British troops to evacuate.

Benedict Arnold

Meanwhile, Arnold launched an attack on Quebec, which failed dramatically and left him with a wounded leg. Arnold retreated down Lake Champlain after his unsuccessful siege of Quebec City on New Year’s Eve, 1775.

By the spring of 1776, the battered American forces had hunkered down at Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Smallpox struck and killed a staggering number of soldiers. John Adams, in a letter to Abigail, described the army at Crown Point as “an Object of Wretchedness, enough to fill a humane Mind, with Horror…”

A Race To Build Ships

Over the summer of 1776, the British amassed a force of some 10,000 troops. But they needed warships to carry them down the lake. The patriot forces had, during their retreat from Quebec, destroyed any vessel that could prove useful to the British.

And though the Americans were badly overmatched, they had seized British gunboats when they captured Ticonderoga.

So British Gen. Guy Carleton, stationed in Saint-Jean at the northern end of the lake, requisitioned and received disassembled warships. Expert British shipwrights reassembled the ships to give Britain a navy on Champlain that included 25 fighting ships and scores of support vessels.

Guy Carleton

Meanwhile, the Americans raced to build their own fleet. Beginning on July 10, Arnold began overseeing construction. He was no longer in his native New Haven, but in upstate New York, nowhere near ship fittings, marine carpenters or experienced sailors. In a frenzy of activity, he requisitioned artisans, organized carpenters, personally selected lumber from local sawmills and supervised the shipment of lead.

Mismatch

The British fleet, when finished, consisted of 20 gunships and five sailing vessels. One was the largest ever to sail on Lake Champlain. The fleet also had 50 support vessels. The British Royal Navy’s most experienced commanders and sailors staffed the vessels. They also carried 1,300 pounds of cannonball, nearly twice as much as the Americans’ 703 pounds.

The American fleet included a sloop, schooners, galleys and flat-bottomed gundalows, large rowboats with sails. Arnold chose as his flagship a captured British schooner, the Royal Savage.

Arnold sailed his little fleet north in September, patrolling the lake. Then on September 23, he moved his fleet to Valcour Island, a spot he had chosen carefully to nullify the British advantage in firepower. The British vessels could only attack one at a time in the rocky channel between the island and shore.

Arnold even camouflaged his boats. He had them painted red to match the autumn leaves and the bulwarks covered in brush.

Arnold stationed his fleet inside the red square.

The Battle of Valcour Island

Gates’ had given Arnold specific orders: “Should the enemy come up the lake and attempt to force their way through the pass you are stationed to defend, in that case you will act with such cool, determined valor as will give them reason to repent their temerity.” Arnold was to keep the British bottled up in Canada until winter, where they would stay until spring.

The British fleet appeared off Valcour Island on the morning of October 11. Arnold sent two vessels out to lure them toward the channel where his fleet lay in wait. At 11 a.m. the fight started — badly for the Americans. The Royal Savage ran aground and the British captured her.

The British pounded the Americans. Arnold’s fleet had played a cat-and-mouse game, ducking into shallower waters to avoid the British fire and emerging to fire broadsides and cannonades at the enemy.

At sunset, the British withdrew to a line south of Valcour Island, blocking the American way out of the channel. Carleton figured they’d finish the job in the morning. Some British ships had literally run out of ammunition in battering the Americans.

Painting of the Battle of Valcour Island from the Canadian National Archives

Arnold’s fleet had taken a terrific pounding. The British killed or wounded 80 and captured 20, one-fifth of the men. The ships were badly damaged. The Americans used up three-quarters of their ammunition. And the British would complete their destruction at sunrise.

Escape

Arnold had a plan both desperate and risky, but with a chance of success. He ordered his men to retreat by slipping between the British ships.

With muffled oars and no lights – and the assistance of a moonless night heavy fog – Arnold’s leaky and battered fleet sneaked south to Crown Point.

Carleton woke up the next morning shocked and furious to find Arnold had dodged a final crushing defeat. Thinking the Americans were hiding somewhere at Valcour Island, he sent ships to search for them.

Then, intuiting what had happened, the British sailed south. With the British fleet bearing down, Arnold began destroying the American ships. The British captured one ship along with 110 men – roughly one-fifth of the American force. Arnold drove the remaining ships onto the rocks and left them in flames, their American flags still flying.

Too Late

As the British secured the area, it began snowing. They concluded that the season was too late to press forward toward Boston. They would winter over in the area preparing for the spring, which set up the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. There, Arnold would achieve his last triumph on behalf of America.

The Battle of Valcour Island typified Arnold’s wartime caareer. His fleet successfully slowed the British advance to give the patriot cause time to grow. But in the flight he had lost many of his records. That ultimately prevented him from winning reimbursement for the money he spent on behalf of the military during his expeditions.

The retreat and loss of the fleet also gave Arnold’s political enemies fodder to use against him. Some even suggested he’d made a mistake by losing the fleet while delaying the advance of the British.

Arnold’s Enemies

Pennsylvania Governor Joseph Reed, Arnold’s chief critic, and Benedict Arnold were in many ways complete opposites, though both were patriots.

Arnold had made his way in New Haven, Conn., in the rough-and-tumble world of trading. Reed was a Philadelphia lawyer.

Arnold served as George Washington’s battlefield general. Reed was a politician and member of Congress. Reed was famously scrupulous with a keen dislike for any taint of corruption. He had no use for anyone with affection for loyalists.

Arnold bent rules to keep his dwindling fortune from being snuffed out completely by the cost of financing the war. And he married a young loyalist wife in Philadelphia. Arnold was shot twice in fighting the Revolutionary War. Reed was never injured in battle; he designed a flag for the navy.

Joseph Reed

Arnold would accuse Reed and his like of refusing to reimburse the costs of war and pushing the promotion of politically connected officers ahead of better-qualified soldiers in the military. Reed would accuse of Arnold of putting his business interests ahead of the revolutionary cause.

Would the American Revolution have succeeded if Arnold and his men had not delayed the British advance, first at Valcour Island and later at Saratoga? Would Arnold have still turned traitor if not for Reed and his supporters badgering him over his bills. Or would Arnold have been lead to support the British anyway, under influence of his young loyalist wife?

And what’s the best way to balance the power of political leaders and military leaders? It makes a good debate.

With thanks to Valcour: The 1776 Campaign That Saved the Cause of Liberty by Jack Kelly. This story was updated in 2023.

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Fame, Fortune, Fire and Brimstone: The Legend of Jonathan Moulton

In 1763, Jonathan Moulton of Hampton, N.H., took his prize oxen north to Portsmouth, N.H. He decorated the impressive 1,400-pound animal with a flag across his horns. It was a gift for colonial Governor Benning Wentworth.

No, Moulton insisted, he could take no payment for the animal. It was a tribute. But he would, if the governor insisted, accept a grant of land. In addition to what is now Center Harbor and Moultonbough (named in Moulton’s honor), perhaps the governor would like to give him additional property. The governor assented and gave him the property now known as New Hampton.

Yet 20 years later, Moulton – a master at ingratiating himself with those in power – would have changed loyalties and led a brigade of soldiers in the Revolutionary War. First he guarded Hampton and later supported the Continental Army at the Battle of Saratoga.

Jonathan Moulton

Portrait of Robert Rogers

Moulton maintained his presence as a Hampton political leader from early youth to his death in 1787. Few men managed to straddle the politics of the age as well as Moulton. And few men were as reviled.

Born in 1726, Moulton came into life with little. He was indentured into labor to a cabinet maker as a child. But he soon showed a passion for business. And by adulthood, historians considered him the wealthiest man in Hampton.

Even his critics agreed he worked hard to get his start in life. New Hampshire Senator William Plumer noted in his diaries:

“By his unwearied attention in buying and selling small articles, he soon became an extensive dealer in English and West India goods. The property that he obtained from a valuable ship wrecked on Hampton Beach, gave him increased credit and business.”

The 1764 shipwreck was a considerable bone of contention. Moulton managed to seize most of the goods from the ship Saint George, which wrecked in Hampton, and used the sheriff to keep other would-be scavengers at bay.

Owner of mansions and slaves, Moulton had procured his business success at an early age. His political success stemmed from his military service in the French and Indian War, where he fought with the likes of legendary New Hampshire general Robert Rogers. He fought ruthlessly against the Indians and rose to the rank of colonel and later general. According to one story, he chased the last member of an Indian party he had routed on the frozen shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. Seeing the retreating Indian headed out onto the ice, Moulton loosed his dog on the man to finish him off.

Seeing Opportunities

During the wars he discovered the opportunities for land development in central New Hampshire. He sought and received extensive grants of land in the New Hampshire interior in thanks for his service to England in the wars.

In business, Moulton was a ruthless as he was in war.

Plumer wrote of him: “The instances of his fraud and deceit, injustice and oppression are numerous; he has reduced many families from affluence to beggary. For 20 years he has been a constant suitor in the courts of law, where he has often attempted to corrupt judges, bribe jurors, suborn witnesses, and seduce the counsel employed by his opponents. I have evidence of his conveying a right of land to a judge who was to decide the title to that and all the other lands that he claimed in that township. The fact was discovered, and the judge never decided the case. I know an instance of his making liberal promises to an influential juryman.”

Despite his questionable business practices, Moulton served as Hampton’s town moderator and representative to the legislature for many years. When President George Washington made his way to New Hampshire on his celebratory tour to thank his supporters, he stopped at Moulton’s home to pay his respects. But Moulton had already died.

Barnburner

Jonathan Moulton steamrolled most people he met in court. Not so with Jonathan Swett, his neighbor and fellow veteran from the French and Indian War. When Swett and Moulton tangled in court, Moulton won. But in following years Moulton’s barn would be burned down four times. Though he suspected his neighbor started the fires, Moulton could never make a case stick.

By the end of his life, Moulton complained that he could no longer get justice in the courts. Unable to sell his 80,000 acres of lane, he overextended himself and his debtors were driving him into poverty. His political allies wouldn’t help. And as Plumer pointed out, it may simply have been that he had cheated so many people he could no longer get a jury to side with him.

Plumer recalled that at the time of his death, Moulton was reviled:

“It was in the later marsh season. September 18, 1787, and the haymakers were working on the extensive salt marshes between Hampton village and the Merrimack River. My grandfather, who remembered it well, assured me that the news of Moulton’s death ran across the meadows as fast as a bird can fly, repeated from one gang of rakers to another. — “The old devil’s dead!” Perhaps his memory has suffered unjustly, but such was the fact.”

Legends of Jonathan Moulton

Moulton died and was buried in an unmarked grave. But his legend was just getting started. In the years that followed three legends arose about him.

The first legend held that Moulton got his wealth by selling is soul to the devil. In the story, Moulton made a deal that the devil would fill a boot with gold for him each month that he lived. Moulton procured the largest boot in the state of New Hampshire for the purpose, and when that proved inadequate he cut the sole out of the boot and placed it on the floor over the top of a hole he bored into the room below, thereby tricking the devil into filling the room with gold.
Suspicious gossipers said that after his burial, someone opened his coffin and found no body. The devil took it and replaced it with gold coins.
The third and final legend held that Moulton was so cheap he stripped his first wife of her wedding ring upon her death from smallpox. He later gave it to his second bride. But one night the ghost of his first wife returned to his home to reclaim her ring from the new wife.

This last legend was immortalized by the writer John Greenleaf Whittier in The New Wife and The Old. For more about Jonathan Moulton, visit Hampton’s Lane Memorial Library’s page dedicated to his story. This story was updated in 2022.

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