The Fox Always Gets Away: A Robber in the Hills

The Rice stagecoach at Gantt's House Hotel, Newport, PA

Our paternal grandfather was born in 1895, and we were very fortunate to hear his stories from the old days (although he said they weren't the good old days, with no heat except in the kitchen and having to go down the hill to the creek for water).  Once he pointed out the spot near Little Buffalo State Park where he had seen the last Rice stagecoach rotting away when he was a boy (I guess a little after 1900).  Brother Steve, in writing the family history, found a photo of one (from a 1906 postcard) at the Perry County Historical Society.  Their mail carrying service ran from 1852 to the 1890s.  Zachariah Rice, Sr.was one of the largest operators in the state with over 500 contracts.  The Perry and Cumberland county routes were operated by the family (including seven sons); others were subcontracted.  "The Rice brothers are remembered by many people whose first glimpse of the outer world came after an overland trip in one of those Rice stages." (H. H. Hain's History of Perry County, 1922).

There are other stories of his that are more widely known, the best one being about "The Robber Lewis."  He was Pennsylvania's Robin Hood, and it's a good one.  Born in Carlisle in 1790, David Lewis was tall, handsome, muscular, likeable and witty, and despite a life of crime not violent.  After some scrape with the law at home (his family had moved to what became Milesburg in Centre county just after his birth), he enlisted in the Army, deserted, reenlisted (probably for a second bonus), was discovered and imprisoned.  Due to his age, the death penalty was set aside, and he then made the first of many escapes -- by sawing through the chain which attached a 30-pound cannonball to his leg.

After learning counterfeiting in Burlington, VT,  Davy committed robberies and Albany and New York City, where his suave style is first recorded.  After using his charm to secure an invitation to a society party put on by John Jacob Astor, he relieved the guests of their valuables and jewels and informed them they had just enjoyed the distinction of being fleeched by "David Lewis, the Robber."  This scene was portrayed in the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

Returning to central Pennsylvania rather a rich man, he and accomplices went on a spree robbing wagons, stagecoaches and travelers throughout the Appalachian back country, while hiding out at the homes of friends, fans and in two caves (one today a tourist site known as Indian Caverns, and one at Doubling Gap west of Carlisle, PA).  Once, Lewis even joined a posse looking for him, later sending the sheriff a note asking if he had enjoyed his company, reminding the lawman that "the fox always gets away."

The Lewis Cave at Doubling Gap

Locals were usually ready to shelter Lewis and warn him of impending danger since he shared his loot freely and was amusingly wily but never deadly.  The story Grandad told was in this vein, here from an 1853 publication:

Lewis encountered an elderly lady, and found her penniless and distraught that the constable was on his way to take her cow in payment for the last half-year's rent.  She said, "I don't know what I'd do without her."  "How much is due?" Lewis asked.  "Twenty dollars, sir." Replied the robber, "Have you no one to help you?" "No one," she replied. He drew the sum from his pocket, saying "Pay that fellow his demand, and take the receipt, but don't say anything about me."

Lewis made his escape, and the widow paid the back rent, collecting the written receipt.  Upon leaving, Lewis jumped into the constable's path, pointing his pistol.  He got his twenty dollars back, and more besides.  He later said "that loan of $20 was a very good investment."

The end came in 1820, after his band of outlaws robbed a merchant's three-wagon train.  The posse killed one of his gang, captured the other, and wounded Davy Lewis badly in the arm.  Refusing an amputation, he died in the Bellefonte (Centre county) jail of gangrene, after writing his confessional autobiography.  He got the last laugh by stating he left over $20,000 in the nearby cave, for which generations of treasure hunters have searched in vain.

The Rice stagecoaches ran late enough in the 19th century to miss the threats of both The Robber Lewis and the Seneca natives.  But it must have been dangerous enough for those intrepid fellows, with daunting weather, breakdowns and accidents, bears and pumas and the ever-present mountain rattlesnakes.  The railroads replaced them in the mail and passenger business, and ironically their descendant our grandfather worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1918 to 1960.

  

Tale Spin

Embroidered stories, spin and lies didn't begin with the printing press, but that pivotal invention was like spreading fertilizer on weeds.  Creation myths, hero tales and even propaganda go all the way back to, well, probably the first "the one that got away" story heard around the Paleolithic camp fire  The mighty Battle of Kadesh between the Hittite and Egyptian empires was actually a draw, but to see Pharaoh tell it on wall inscriptions he was the undisputed victor.  Representations on coins of the ancient world are often the same sort of thing.

Actual events and people are behind the legends of King Arthur, El Cid and the Trojan War as well as Bible stories.  "Dragnet's" Sergeant Friday may have only wanted "the facts," but humans in general much prefer an epic story.

And so the life stories of a 14th Century French couple would have been long forgotten along with those of millions of others but for the imaginations of writers and generations of wide-eyed readers.  

Perenelle Delamere Flamel lived from 1320 to 1397, and was married to Nicolas Flamel in 1368 at age 48, after surviving two previous husbands   Nicholas, a scrivener (one who wrote for the illiterate and made copies) as well as a manuscript seller, lived on to a very old age (d/ 1418).  They owned several properties, and Perenlle was likely a wealthy widow.  They might have been remembered as philanthropists, if at all, since they donated generously to the needy, hospitals, churches and established two alms houses.  But their wealth and long lives excited dark speculation that their success was due to alchemy -- changing base metals into gold -- and having discovered the elixir of immortality in an ancient manuscript.  Perenelle was assumed to be a witch, having the "sight" and great powers as the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.  It was said the couple had traveled the world for twenty years to find and grow these skills and had returned fabulously wealthy.  Tomb raiders were said to have found their graves empty, proof that they lived on.  Of course, there is no extant evidence of their world journey or being missing from their graves. 

Two centuries after they lived, printers, writers and publishers were competing to cater to a growing reading public eager to hear strange and fantastic tales -- which both came back from, and sent explorers to, the far East and West in search of El Dorado, Cathay, the Isle of California and the Fountain of Youth.  The remembered rumors about the mysterious French couple got the treatment also.  Present day writers J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, Umberto Eco and Michael Scott continue to spin out the legend of the alchemist and the witch, who have actually found an eternal life in a way.

There are two streets in Paris named after the Flamels, and their home (or possibly one of the almshouses) still exists at 51 Rue de Montmorency, the oldest stone house in the city.  Whether they live on in some disguise or not, their story lives and grows, as good ones do, true or otherwise.

The Flamel home in Paris

Yankee Vampires

No, that's not the title of a Presidente Fidel Castro speech (at least as far as I know).  The vampire panic in New England lasted from around 1790 to 1895 and involved some very strange scenes in the graveyards.

All over the world, when livestock, crops or people suffered misfortune, disease or death, people have been wont to blame supernatural forces, often embodied in those they identified as witches, vampires or agents of the Devil.  To stop a vampire's predation, it had to be exhumed from the grave, and identified by a well-preserved corpse, have the internal organs -- especially the heart -- cut out and burned.  After Bram Stoker's Dracula came out in 1897 it was easy to imagine this happening in medieval Transylvania, but in  nineteenth-century New England?

Rhode Island farmer and orchardist Stukley Tillinghast began having nightmares in which his orchard was dying and his daughter Sarah was swept away by a cold wind.  Poor Sarah, 19 years old, took ill soon after and passed away.  Another daughter became ill and said that Sarah visited her every night.  She too then died, followed by four more children, who also claimed Sarah visited and touched them.  In a panic over this devastation, the farmer and others exhumed the bodies finding them all decomposed except for Sarah, who was, after six months, in good condition with her eyes staring and open.  They cut out and burned her heart, but the deaths continued with a son.  Then they ceased.

A hundred years later, in the same area of Essex, Rhode Island, the scenario played out again:  farmer George Brown lost his wife and two daughters to a wasting illness.  When son Edwin showed the same symptoms, George and neighbors exhumed those bodies to see if they were vampies preying on their own family, but only bones were found.  Except for daughter Mercy, who was well preserved (although she died in January and may have been above ground in a nearby stone crypt -- you can't dig graves in New England in the winter).  They, of course, cut her heart out and burned it.  Again, the last son did die anyway, and again, no one after that did.

Between these two events, around 1850 in Connecticut, Henry Ray's three sons wasted away and died one after the other.  The two elder were disinterred and burned, but Henry followed them in death in 1854.

There are too many similar stories, such as that of Rachel Harris who died in 1790.  Her widower subsequently married her stepsister who soon showed the same symptoms.  A mob of about 500 residents of Manchester, Vermont exhumed Rachel and burned her liver, heart and lungs.  When the second wife died anyway, they concluded that Rachel must have been a witch rather than a vampire.

But the culprit was not either one, but the bacillus which causes tuberculosis, called "consumption" previously because it consumed the body with weight loss and fever.  When the cause of the disease was identified in 1882, the vampire panic faded away.  Even today, with treatment finally available, it is still the leading infectious disease killer.

My grandmother would never drink milk.  When I asked her why, she said the "milk disease" had killed too many of her rural neighbor children when she was young, and it still scared her.  Milk infected with bovine tuberculosis was indeed often the source of TB before pasteurization became widespread during the first half of the twentieth century.  That is what finally quieted the vampires.

Mercy Brown, the "last New England vampire"