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Milford Conn.

Captain William Kidd, Vicious Pirate or Enterprising Privateer?

William Kidd supposedly buried treasure off the Connecticut coast before sailing to Boston in 1699. There, he thought, he would receive clemency for his piracy.

He was wrong about that.

William Kidd

The treasure was never found – nor were the uncontested facts about his career. Some considered him a vicious pirate, one of many who crowded Boston’s jails at the turn of the 18^th century. Others viewed him as a privateer framed by his benefactors.

William Kidd, Captain

Not much is known about his early life. He was born Jan. 22, 1645 (Old Style), in Dundee, Scotland, to a mariner father lost at sea. Some claim his father was Puritan minister.

In 1689, Capt. William Kidd sailed the Caribbean in a French ship he’d captured as a privateer (some say pirate). England and France were embroiled in a conflict known as King William’s War in the American colonies.

Stories conflict about what happened to him in the Caribbean in 1689, but they agree Kidd’s crew abandoned him.

He returned to New York City, where in 1691 he married Sarah Bradley Cox Oort. She had married one of the wealthiest men in New York and inherited his money when he died early in their marriage. Twice widowed, she had not yet reached 30 when she married Capt. William Kidd.

Kidd lived large in New York, a respected member of society. He lived with Sarah and their two daughters in a tall house on Wall Street with Turkish carpets on the floor and wine in the cellar. He lent the runner and tackle from his ship to raise the stones for Trinity Church, where he owned a pew.

But he preferred the sea, and he sailed to London to obtain a royal commission. He wanted to fight pirates attacking British East India ships in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. He also got financing from investors, including Richard Coote, Lord Bellomont.

In 1696, Kidd sailed out of Portsmouth, England, in one of the most famous pirate ships in history, Adventure. A galley ship with sails and oars, its crew could row it to overtake becalmed merchant ships. It had 34 big guns and more than 100 men.

Terror of the Sea

Lord Bellomont

Captain Kidd spent the next two years terrorizing merchant ships. He also amassed a fortune in gold, silks and jewels from his prey. Did he do it as a privateer, taking ships he was legally entitled to? Or did he do it as a pirate? History has not settled the question.

When he refused to attack a Dutch ship, his gunner objected. They argued, and Kidd threw a bucket at the gunner’s head. It fractured his skull, and he died the next day.

In January 1698, William Kidd made his fatal mistake. He captured the Quedah Merchant, a handsome vessel loaded with treasure. Unfortunately for Kidd, a minister at the court of the Indian Grand Moghul owned the ship.

The British government wanted to stay on good terms with the Moghul Empire. They needed someone to blame for capturing the treasure-laden ship.

By then, Kidd knew he was wanted for piracy. He saved French passes he had seized as proof he was a privateer and not a pirate, and he sailed for Boston. His financial backer, Lord Bellomont, lived there then during his short tenure as governor of Massachusetts. But Bellomont believed William Kidd had turned into a liability, as people believed he’d descended into piracy. And so he falsely promised clemency to Captain Kidd.

Convicted, then Vindicated?

The body of William Kidd

According to lore, William Kidd took a roundabout route to New York City, sailing around Long Island and burying his treasure. Some think he may have buried it on Charles Island off the coast of Milford, Conn.

On July 6, 1699, Kidd was arrested at the home of Lord Bellomont. Historians agree on this: Bellomont and the British government used him as a fall guy to pacify the Mogul Empire and the East India company.

William Kidd went to prison in Boston, where he languished for a year. In the meantime, he tried to negotiate his freedom by offering to tell where his treasure lay buried.

It didn’t work.

Officials put him on a ship to England. On May 8, 1701, the court convicted him of murdering his gunner and of piracy, despite his claims of innocence. Fifteen days later, he was hanged at Execution Dock. The rope broke and he fell into the mud beneath the gallows.

Eyewitnesses said he was drunk and didn’t realize what happened as the crowd cheered his fall. He was hanged again, and his body dipped in tar, wrapped in chains and put in a steel cage. There his bones hung for many years.

In 1910 at the British Public Records archives, researchers found French passes that Captain Kidd claimed would prove his innocence.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Reddy the Blacksmith and His New York Bowery Boys Invade Connecticut

There are the Hollywood Bowery Boys of the movies – who morphed from gritty city slum dwellers to whimsical scamps on the big screen. Then there are the real Bowery Boys of the middle 1840s and 50s, anti-Catholic thugs of the Know-Nothing movement. Reddy the Blacksmith was one of them.

Riot Between the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits gangs in 1857 (NY Public Library)

Though these Bowery Boys were largely working class men who formed a society around their volunteer fire company, they also dabbled in a wide variety of crime. In 1857 they engaged with another gang, the Dead Rabbits, in a three day gang war that terrorized New York City.

The Bowery Boys were street brawlers, barroom thugs, gamblers and thieves who outfitted themselves in red shirts, black pants, leather boots and stove-pipe hats. They provided their chosen New York politicians an army of “repeaters” – men who would register and vote in multiple city neighborhoods to bring home the wins for the corrupt politicians. And they liked prizefighting.

Illicit Action

Just after dark on the night of February 11, 1867, a train pulled into New Haven station carrying a load of these New York toughs. They went to one of the city’s darkest and dirtiest streets and joined up with boxer Billy Warburton.

From there they sneaked off into the dark, heading toward nearby Milford. In this small town, Warburton and Horatio Bolster, a local Waterbury, Conn., fighter were to square off. The New York Tribune sent a reporter along to shadow the illicit action as the crowd set up a makeshift ring on a level field along the banks of the Housatonic River.

“The Yale students, the gamblers, thieves, pickpockets, fighters and others all crowd up to the ropes, and men in very loud attire from Houston Street, and the contiguous faro banks begin to offer bets in a very noisy manner,” he reported. All night long the carousing continued.

Around nine o’clock on the morning of the 12th, Warburton tossed his fur hat into the ring. Literally tossing a hat in the ring was a challenge that a man was willing to fight. At about 10 o’clock with the crowd swelled, Bolster threw his hat in, and the fight was set.

Warburton was the taller and heavier of the two men. Bolster appeared so drunk he could hardly stand up straight. The odds heavily favored Warburton as the fight started. The fight was not governed by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules. Rather, the bare-knuckled fighters could butt heads, gouge eyes and otherwise freelance. The fight could go on for as many rounds as both men wanted. Rules were few, though you could not hit an opponent when he was down.

Disgusting and Beastly

Bolster employed a strange but clever strategy. He would take two or three punches from Warburton, then flop to the ground, apparently smiling.

After five rounds of this, Warburton’s temper got the best of him. In the sixth round, Bolster flopped and Warburton pursued him, landing several punches while the smaller man lay on the ground. Warburton was disqualified. The decision enraged the crowd, which expected to see at least a dozen rounds of fighting.

By the time the crowds left Milford, the toughs had terrorized the little village. A free-for-all broke loose, tumbling its way through town. The crowd smashed windows and destroyed fences. An impromptu match was finally arranged at the railroad tracks between a man from Connecticut and another from Rhode Island named Breeney and Arnold.

“They fought up and down the enclosed track in the most disgusting and beastly manner, for a space of twenty minutes, chawing, biting and gouging each other without molestation or interference from the delighted crowd. Breeney had his upper lip and part of his nose eaten off and his head nearly kicked to pieces, and when our reporter left the depot at the Junction, Arnold was upon the platform of the signal station, lying unconscious and unheeded as any dog, bleaching in the sun, while three of the country police stood at a distance of about 20 feet calmly whittling sticks and debating whether they should or should not arrest the reporter who was present.”

Time for the Cops

The town of Milford was outraged. Town officials got ready for any repeat and hired professional police officers. In 1869, prizefighting popped up again in Mystic. On the train ride home this time the Bowery Boys took control of the train and robbed the passengers.

Now the state realized the prize fight promoters were playing hide and seek. The governor and police kept their ear to the ground and waited for 1870. They learned that the Bowery Boys intended another trip to Connecticut. The gang planned to come back to Milford’s Charles Island. This time, however, the state would be ready.

The fight in 1870 was to be between Edward Touhey and James Kerrigan on April 13. Touhey was from Brooklyn and Kerrigan from New York City.

Reddy the Blacksmith

Reddy the Blacksmith organized the fight. Born in Liverpool to Irish parents, his real name was William Varley. In New York, he belonged to the Bowery Boys gang, (though presumably after the gang dropped its anti-Catholicism.

His nickname came from his red hair and his training as a blacksmith, and he reportedly used his blacksmithing skills to craft burglary tools. During his short life, Reddy became something of a criminal legend in New York. He owned a small grocery and a saloon on Broadway at Houston Street.

He was a brawler, a killer, and a gambler who controlled much of the criminal activity in New York’s Bowery District around 1870. Reddy had a long record of arrests. Since his arrival in New York in 1848 at age 13, he killed three men, each time escaping with a plea of self-defense. One election day he had been arrested with 15 property tax bills in his pocket, each with a different address – he had planned to vote 15 times.

Once he robbed a man and fled to California to wait while his victim could be persuaded to change his story. He was caught because he helped free a woman from a train compartment whose lock had gotten jammed. Watching him smoothly work open the lock, the train security realized he had to be a professional thief, and they returned him to New York. But by then, of course, his victim had changed his tune.

Reddy showed up in Connecticut to stage the Touhey-Kerrigan prize fight. But that night Governor Marshall Jewell would thwart him. Jewell, born in New Hampshire, was a businessman who ran a tannery that produced leather goods during the Civil War.

Charles Island

The public in Connecticut was disgusted by the prizefighters that invaded the state – seemingly without fear of punishment. Participating or organizing a prize fight could get you five years in jail. Attending one could get you two. Yet New York rogues had managed to slip into Connecticut, stage their fights, run roughshod over the local people and return to New York with impunity. Jewell would end that.

Touhey and his entourage left Brooklyn for Charles Island on a steamer – the Pope Catlin. Kerrigan made his way using a series of boats. In Bridgeport, the fight-goers got their first hint that there might be trouble as rumors spread that the police might put a stop to the fight.

Charles Island

The rumors were right.

While police were busy rounding up a hundred or so people at the fight scene on Charles Island, another group of fight fans boarded a train at Bridgeport hoping to return to New York. When the train hit Fairfield, however, it stopped for longer than usual at the station. Then the train’s locomotive uncoupled itself from the cars and pulled away.

The fight fans were puzzled. But not for long. Governor Jewell had dispatched the National Guard, which arrived in another train to arrest the fight fans at gun point. The jails filled filled with fighters, promoters, gamblers and pickpockets. The Pope Catlin, meanwhile, was impounded.

Keep Them

Learning that Reddy Blacksmith & Co. were in jail in Connecticut, the New York Sun ran the headline: “Keep Them, Connecticut.” But Reddy’s friends had already bailed him out and returned him home.

Reddy actually made one other “raid” on Connecticut in 1871 — a political raid. The Bowery Boys had a reputation for breaking up polls, smashing ballot boxes and otherwise disrupting New York City elections.

Marshall Jewell

In the fall of 1871, Gov. Marshall Jewell faked a telegraph from his opponent, James English. It made it look like English planned to bring the Bowery Boys to Connecticut to disrupt the voting and ensure a win for English. He got the press to publicize the story. The Sunday before the voting, Jewell managed to have an intermediary pay to bring Reddy he Blacksmith and his gangs into Connecticut. He wanted to validate the story and galvanize his supporters to come out and vote. He emerged with a win.

Reddy the Blacksmith had to close up his saloon in 1875. Bright ’s Disease of the kidneys had slowed him and he died within the year.

Images: Charles Island By Randal J. (RJFerret) – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6010467. Reddy the Blacksmith <ref name=NYPL>{{cite web | url=https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a6138e40-93e8-0130-3813-58d385a7bbd0 | title= (still image) William Varley, alias “Reddy the Blacksmith.” Pickpocket, thief and Democratic “regulator.” (See appendix.), (1869) |author=Digital Collections, The New York Public Library |accessdate=March 28, 2022 |publisher=The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations}}</ref>. Riot By Illus. in: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, v. 4, (1857 July 18), p. 108. – Call number: Illus. in AP2.L52 1857 (Case Y) [P&P]Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-121644 (b&w film copy neg.)Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=605475.

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Margaret Van Horn Dwight Crosses Mountains in 1810 To Find a Husband in Ohio

Four days into her 600-mile wagon journey to Ohio, Margaret Van Horn Dwight survived the night in a small dirty tavern filled with drunks.

At 19, she was on her way to stay with cousins in Warren, Ohio, after a lifetime of shuttling among relatives.

Her difficult journey over the Allegheny Mountains ended happily. A year after she arrived safely, she married a prosperous merchant, and had 13 children with him.

Margaret Van Horn Dwight

Margaret Van Horn Dwight was born Dec. 29, 1790 into a famous family. She was the great-granddaughter of theologian Jonathan Edwards, and the niece of Timothy Dwight, president of Yale. She would have a famous descendant, the best-selling novelist Winston Churchill.

Her father, a doctor, died in 1796. When her mother remarried, she sent Margaret to live with her grandmother in Northampton, Mass. Margaret’s grandmother died after she turned 16, and she went to live with an aunt in New Haven, Conn.

On Oct. 22, 1810, Margaret Van Horn Dwight set out to join cousins in Connecticut’s Western Reserve – later known as Ohio, but known to Margaret as New Connecticut.

In Warren, Ohio, she met and married William Bell, an Irish-born wholesale merchant. They lived most of their lives in Pittsburgh, where they made their home a center of hospitality.

Throughout her life, Margaret Van Horn Dwight impressed people with her vivacity, her sweetness and her devotion to religion.

Margaret died on Oct. 9, 1834, shortly after the birth of her 13^th child. One of those children had a grandson named Winston Churchill, who became a best-selling American novelist.

Westward, Ho!

She traveled to Ohio in a wagon with a frugal deacon named Wolcott, his wife, daughter Susan and son Erastus. The six-week, 600-mile journey was slow and difficult. They could barely pass over the roads or climb the steep mountains. She found the taverns dirty and disgusting.

During the journey, she learned how to eat raw pork and drink whiskey.

Margaret Van Horn Dwight kept a travel diary, which she sent to a cousin. Her family handed it down, and in 1912 it was published as A Journey to Ohio in 1810.

The Journey

They set out from Milford, Conn., on Oct. 19, 1810, a cold and unsociable ride, she wrote. Each of the travelers was ‘thinking of the friends we had left behind & of the distance, which was every moment increasing, between them & us.’

Three days later (today a three-hour drive) they reached West Chester, Pa., where they stayed at Cook’s Inn.

That night, Margaret wrote,

It is very grating to my pride to go into a tavern & furnish & cook my own provision — to ride in a wagon &c &c — but that I can possibly get along with–but to be obliged to pass the night in such a place as we are now in, just because it is a little cheaper, is more than I am willing to do.

Fat, Dirty, Ugly

The small, dirty house served as a tavern, a store and, she imagined, a hog’s pen and stable. At night the house filled with noisy drunken men. The landlady was fat, dirty, ugly and suspicious.

On Tuesday morning, Oct. 23, Margaret wrote:

I went to bed last night with fear & trembling, & feel truly glad to wake up & find myself alive & well–if our property is all safe, we shall have double cause to be thankful.

Along the way, they encountered many other wagons heading westward. “Waggons without number, every day go on,” she wrote. “One went on containing forty people We almost every day, see them with 18 or 20.”

Many young women, like Margaret Van Horn Dwight, expected to meet and marry a husband once they arrived. While staying at one tavern, she wrote, she met ‘a curiosity in the house’ — a young lady returning from New Connecticut after living in Warren a year. She called it, ‘a thing I never before heard of, & had begun to think impossible.’

Mountain High, River Deep

She found the roads ‘bad past description.’ Nevertheless, she described large stones and deep mud holes every step of the way. On one stretch the horses could scarcely move the wagon in the deep mud. “It has grown so cold that I fear we shall all perish tomorrow.”

She climbed seven mountains on foot because the horses couldn’t pull them.

It rained constantly in Pennsylvania, causing the streams and rivers to flood. Margaret Van Horn Dwight described how a waggoner with four horses drowned crossing a creek.

Near the state prison they waited three or four hours for the ferry to cross a river.

“We with great difficulty cross’d the ferry & I, standing brac’d against one side of the boat involuntarily endeavouring to balance it with my weight & groaning at every fresh breeze as I watch’d the side which almost dipt in the water,” she wrote. The ferrymen swore at every breath, but finally they reached shore almost frozen.

Journey’s End

On Dec. 1, 1810, Margaret Van Horn Dwight reached her destination: Warren, Ohio.

“Cousin Louisa was as happy to see me as I could wish, & I think I shall be very happy & contented.”

A year later she married, and began to have children. A daughter, Margaret DeWitt Bell, married John Logan Blaine, whose son Edward fathered the novelist Winston Churchill.

Margaret Van Horn Dwight Bell died at the age of 43 on Oct. 9, 1834 after giving birth to her last child.

This story was updated in 2022.

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