Colonial Crime All the Time
These ain't your Willie Nelson's highwaymen...
Welcome to another stupendous edition of Our Belated Past. Your monthly-ish (or whenever I get around to it) dose of historical musings. If you enjoy what you read and want some more, feel free to check out my book, Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place, and why not go ahead and preorder my next book due in the fall, Raising Philadelphia: The Making of America’s First Great City (I thumb my nose at you, Wilmington!).
Be sure to check out my recent appearance on The Michael Shermer Show.
So I have a new book coming out in the fall, Raising Philadelphia: The Making of America’s First Great City, 1750-1775. As you can tell from the title it is all about colonial Philadelphia and how it came to be the cultural heart and soul of British North America.
Thinking of ways to try to promote its release (always a challenge), I thought about this wonderful little newsletter I do. I have already written about a couple of interesting 18th century topics (sea monsters and Franklin hoaxes), and thought it would be fun to keep mining our colonial past and seeing what rises to the surface. So consider yourselves warned that for the rest of the year you are getting nothing but weird stuff from the colonial period. And it’s going to be so, so glorious.
I wanted to start this train off right and talk about a topic that has fascinated me for a number of years: American highwaymen. And not the country supergroup.
These outlaws were very much active throughout the colonial and Revolutionary periods in American history.
One thing I learned during the research for Raising Philadelphia (pre-order now!) was just how popular TRUE CRIME was in the colonial period. Printers, like Ben Franklin, gobbled up any and every crime story they could find to publish in their newspapers. And they would pump out a plethora of small pamphlets related to true crime that would be the bestsellers of their day and be the most checked out books in the libraries that sprung up all around Philadelphia.
Not only does this demonstrate the American public’s fascination with true crime predates the country itself and American media’s promotion of the misfortunes of others, but it also shows that there was plenty of intriguing crime going on to fill the newspapers and pamphlets.
Which is where the highwaymen come in. Pennsylvania had its fair share of criminal gangs around Philadelphia and in the western counties committing basically all the crimes: assault & battery, arson, horse theft, regular thefts, war profiteering, spying, counterfeiting, etc. Men that took advantage of the lawless nature of the frontier, much like a century later Frank and Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and John Wesley Hardin would in the American West.
The fun thing is that most of these gangs consisted of group of brothers that made colonial crime a family affair.
The Shockeys
If you are the type to believe everything that you read, then the Shockey Gang had one of the most far-reaching criminal enterprises of the Revolutionary Era. Terrorizing, stealing, and passing false currency from Virginia to Canada using the Great Valley as their own personal highway to hell.
The Shockey patriarch, John Christopher Shockey, which was Angelicized from the very German looking Johann Chritoffer Schäcke.* And it is not a coincidence that when Johann passed away in 1775 that his boys really upped their criminal game. Because shortly after Johann's death, his sons Isaac and Abraham approached Michael Milligan, an engraver in Blair County, PA, to whip up some plates to create fake 30 dollar bills. Not sure if these were Pennsylvania or Continental dollars, my guess it was probably Pennsyl-bucks.
*If you’re looking for learning some more about the importance of German immigration to the Pennsylvania by way of Philadelphia, I know of a book coming out this fall…
Then, the following year, their older brother Valentine Shockey shows up on Milligan’s door wanting another set of 30 dollar plates. Followed by Isaac and Abraham making another stop in 1779 for 40 dollar plates. They managed to collect those plates right before Milligan was arrested and transported east where he snitched on the whole lot of Shockey Boys.
This would not have any immediate impact on Ike, Abe, or Valentine, but it would really mess up the life of their little brother, Christopher. Who fresh off of spending three years serving in the 7th Pennsylvania Regiment, not without his fair share of issues while fighting in the Revolutionary War that included two court martials and a brush with execution for desertion, all Christopher wanted a “treat-yo-self” day and got his hands on his brothers’ fake bills. He showed up in Carlisle, PA flashing that cash to get himself a new set of clothes, a fresh shave, and a couple pints before hightailing it out of there.
This really pissed off the people of Carlisle and they spent months looking for his ass. A posse finally caught up with him after a stake out around his suspected hideout. He was then executed, even after many, many people came forward asking for leniency and after Christopher said he would go back and serve in the Revolutionary War. To no avail, he was hung on December 11, 1779.
Valentine kept up his criminal ways for many years; the law eventually caught up to him and he first stood trial in 1803 in Martinsburg (now West Virginia) and Winchester, Virginia and served time. Dying in 1810.
The Doanes
Also during the Revolutionary War, another group of brothers, Moses, Joseph, Aaron, Mahlon, and Levi Doane, took up a crusade to rob as many tax collectors as they could and beat the shit out of anyone that got in their way.
These Quakers were rather un-Quakerly and got their hatred of tax collectors from their father, Joseph Doane, Sr., who refused to pay taxes. However, this very American hatred of taxes did not mean they were simpatico with the Continental cause during the Revolution. Just the opposite.
The Doanes went out of their way to support the Brits in their own criminal way. They acted as spies for the British, relaying troop movements to the Redcoats and would steal horses to sell to the British. And their biggest score was against the Bucks County tax collector on October 22, 1781 taking with them £1,300.
The Pennsylvania and the Continental Congress both placed bounties on their heads. After additional strings of robberies throughout 1782 and into 1783, the law finally started catching up with them. A posse shot and killed Moses in 1783, while two of the brothers were captured but managed to escape and flee up north. But two others were hanged in Philadelphia in 1788.
The Nugents
The last group was, guess-what, a gang of ornery brothers, the Nugents: William, Benjamin, and James, that ran roughshod up and down the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania for 20 years from the 1760s on into the 1780s, where they committed a whole host of crimes from assault and battery to creating fake promissory notes. James was even jailed briefly in 1779 for distributing counterfeit money, which probably meant he was in touch with the Shockeys and their counterfeiting ring.
Cumberland County issued a 1,000 dollar reward for William and Benjamin after they spearheaded a series of arsons around the county. Benjamin’s freedom would not last long though as James and him were arrested for highway robbery after taking what they thought to be a bottle of whiskey from a traveler. When it turned out to be a bottle of yeast, the brothers broke the bottle over the guy’s head and beat him up. They were soon caught and sentenced to death.
On the day of their hanging, they refused to leave their cells so the jailor burned sulfur in their room to roust them out. When they eventually did leave their cell one of them supposedly said, “Hell can be no worse than that.” (Wicked Carlisle, 15)
At the same time, William was arrested in Virginia and sentenced to do hard labor in the western iron mines, but he skipped out and was promptly arrested in York County for horse theft where he received 39 lashes, paid some fines, and did hard labor in the public workhouse.
The last we hear of William is in 1788 when Franklin County, Pennsylvania issued a 200 dollar reward for his capture saying, “Nugent has been charged with many others, and the good people of this county are at present afraid of his enormities and depredations. [Nugent was] lurking about, to the terror and annoyance of the good people of the county.” There are some reports that he was eventually captured and executed but no evidence exists to back that up.
Sources:
Between the Lines: Banditti of the American Revolution - Harry M. Ward
“The Valley Scourge” - THIS GUY!
Wicked Carlisle - Joseph David Cress