Chapter XV: Section I: Art. 1. This society shall be known by the name of the (2)

The doctor tells me some of the boys have had a flare-up in Buffalo; but that is nothing new, as our Canada friends act very imprudent. He tells me since he left us, that several cabs have been traced out, and no traces of the workmen left which can injure any one party. He came through Columbus, Ohio! He says they are hard at work, but scarce of material, and no means to procure it. I have not the least doubt but you might find it profitable to go or send some one to supply their wants, so we can make it very profitable. Our friends, ---- ----, ---- ----, _take_ Fort Meggs, and at Manhattan (I have reference to our judge and the lawyer we met in Manhattan, Ohio) have made out well with the horses, taken them in the summer, and say they wish the boys would bring them one hundred head before the lake closes. The doctor brought me a letter to that effect. I leave this place to-morrow evening for the Forks of the road, where I shall expect a letter from you. Let my friend ---- ---- know I am well.

Yours, ---- ----,

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[This describes the bearer to be UNDAUNTED, ACTIVE, TEMPERATE, IMPRUDENT, LOW, and HEAVY, LIGHT-COMPLEXIONED, by profession a LAWYER and MERCHANT; age from FORTY to FIFTY-FIVE, QUICK-SPOKEN.]

No. 4.
Four Corners, October 24, 1825.

_Friend Brown_,--I have arrived at the Four Corners, where I was pleased to receive your favour of the 17th, and having the good luck to learn that five of the brethren of Virginia are in the neighbourhood, and would leave to-morrow evening for their homes by the way of Lawrenceburgh, I make ready this and forward it by them for the purpose to inform you that our friend ---- ----, the cooper, cannot, without my consent, have any more stock, unless he pays for it in advance, as I am satisfied he does not wish to act out the correct principles. He tried, the day before I left, to make me agree to take cooperage for the last stock he got; and though he made it answer to the whole face, two hundred, yet he did not wish to pay me thirty in cash, and said you promised to supply him at fifteen cents per hundred, and take it out in cooperage; if so, your contracts must be for your own private benefit, not mine; he has gulled me enough, and I cannot stand his slabbering discourse any more. I am satisfied he has no moral honesty. Our friend, the grocery-keeper, must pay for his last, as he has bartered it all off. I met an intimate friend of his from Burlington, Kentucky, on Clifty, in company with our light-complexioned friend, who lives not far in the county back of the burgh. Two who accompany this are crossed (+) 9's, immediately from Tennessee, and have been travelling fifteen nights. They are accompanied by a brother from Charleston, Virginia, another from Parkersburg, Virginia, and a third from Marietta, Ohio; all wealthy, the bearer and all, worthy brethren. The bearer is a Grand.

Yours, ---- ----.

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[This describes the bearer as being BOLD, ARTFUL, ACTIVE, TEMPERATE, LOW, and HEAVY, SANDY-COMPLEXIONED, by profession a MERCHANT; age from THIRTY to FORTY, QUICK-SPOKEN.]

No. 5.
Sugar Creek, October 24, 1825.

_Esteemed Brown_,--After two nights' hard travelling, I find myself well provided for, in company with our old "Bogus Friend," who informs me he has just returned from Toronto, Canada; and has brought some of the most splendid bogus I ever have seen, and sells it, in trade at 33-1/3, 28 in cash. I purchased two thousand of him, part trade, part cash; and he is to deliver it to you. He has sent a large quantity to Brookville, Indiana, and he will send your two thousand from Brookville. I let him have four horses, which I purchased from our Rising-sun Brethren. He sent them immediately to his lawyer, in or near Sandusky, who will forward them immediately to Michigan. I believe the horse trade is better, and a great deal more safe than the slave. There are many brethren living here, and of the best order, and live up to the principles of the Brotherhood; and of the many which live here, and in fact all through these parts, very few are considered other than men of the highest respectability. But I hear many making inquiry about our Lawrenceburgh Aurora, and Rising-sun brethren, and say the brethren have acted in many respects badly, and our friend ---- ----, in the burgh, who purchased the pork he shipped from some of them; they say that he has deceived them. I feel mortified to think he has no more principle: I want you to call and tell him he must settle, and I think he ought to know the same without advice. They are the wrong men for him to try to gull; I have every right to suspect him of dishonesty, when I think how much the Brotherhood has done for him, you and I in particular, and know how he treated us; and though we have given him all of the start he has, he would sacrifice us both, with our families, for a hundred dollars. I have found out that Sulivan did not make his escape, as he assured us he did, but was sold for seven hundred and fifty dollars. So you can depend he has swindled you and I; do not trust him farther than you can see him, and recommend him in the right numbers. This will be handed you by a brother living near the islands Sixty-two and Sixty-three, on the Mississippi; he is about to make a permanent location, and wishes to purchase six or eight blacks. If the lot we have an interest in have not left the burgh, he is the man: he says there are large bands of the brethren settled near him; I hope you can please him.

Yours in haste, ---- ----.

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[This describes the bearer as follows: BOLD, ARTFUL, TEMPERATE, LARGE and TALL, LIGHT-COMPLEXIONED, PLANTER by profession, HEAD DAPPLED GRAY; age from THIRTY to FORTY, QUICK SPOKEN.]

No. 6.
Indianopolis, November 5, 1825.

_Friend Brown_,--I have been waiting four days for your answer to mine of the 24th, and this day have the pleasure of receiving it. I am glad to hear that your friends in the east have not forgotten you; I had a letter forwarded me to this place, speaking of your liberality to the people in Pittsburg, when you visited there last spring, and our friends ---- & Co., the iron traders, are very anxious for another trade. I think they have made better use of their trade than our two Marietta merchants ---- ----; the latter, I believe, some of the boys got hold on, as he was going east, and he returned, one thousand minus, in clear dust, and his twelve hundred in coney. The Steubenville merchant is here, and has contracted with me for two hundred dollars' worth of coney, assorted; he tells me that a brother in a flat boat has been put aside for his plunder, which, sad to relate, was but little; and that he saw the wife of the deceased was trying to make up the amount at this time in Cincinnati; if she has not effected it, I think some attention had better be given her before it is too late, as she is satisfied it was done through mistake. You had better go or send some one to see her; you will find her on Sixth street, at the widow ----, or if you inquire at, ---- ----, cabinet-maker, on Sycamore. I will give ten; you will give the same: tell ---- ----, on Lower Market, he must do the same; it is a pity she should suffer through mistake. She is a fine woman, and all of the Brotherhood should befriend her. I hope you have, from your letter, become satisfied with the friendship of ---- ----. I told you they would not do--I have known them from boys, and the day they got that bogus from you so cheap, I would sooner have thrown it in the river. The airs they put on about that negro, satisfied me that they had forfeited all principles of honesty, which is the way with such men after they become able to live--never think they are beholding. I will write you again in a few days. The bearer of this I have learned is a good brother.

Yours, ---- ----.

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[This describes the bearer to have been BOLD, ARTFUL, TEMPERATE, TREACHEROUS, MEDDLESOME, IMPRUDENT, LOW and HEAVY, SANDY-COMPLEXIONED, a MERCHANT by profession, and that he had been a convict; his age between THIRTY and FORTY, disease SCROFULOUS.]

No. 7.
Indianopolis, November 9, 1825.

_Friend Brown_,--The town is full of our warm friends, and I am happy to say that there is a fine spirit existing. To-morrow night I will leave for Fayetteville; I have received your package of coney, and disposed of three thousand to the old doctor we met while we were in Canandaigua; he is the man we sold the flour to at Buffalo. He resides in St. Louis, Missouri, I hope he may do well, as he is a great man, and has more knowledge of mankind than any man of his age in America, and will trade from a pin to a steamboat. He tells me he purchased the lot of negroes which were in Madison, and he says that he heard, since he left, that three more had been deposited for sale by the same man; if so, he wishes you to write him a few lines to Terrehaute, and a copy of the same to Vincennes. He tells me he will be able to get rid of every dollar at these two places, and that he can purchase one hundred head of horses if he wished, all which have come from other states, and some fine blooded stock. I learn through friend ---- ----, of Bairdstown, Kentucky, that there has been some hard talk about Judge ----, at Lexington. I have no confidence in a man who drinks and gambles, as he does; I do not care how wealthy he is, nor how great a title he wears; for my part I intend to keep clear of him, with all of his wealth and title; and your friend in Maysville is another. I write in haste, and send it by our brother.

Yours, ---- ----.

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[This number describes the bearer to be BOLD, ARTFUL, TEMPERATE, IMPRUDENT, LARGE and TALL, of DARK COMPLEXION, by profession a MERCHANT; he is diseased with RHEUMATISM; his age from THIRTY to FORTY, hair DAPPLED.]

No. 8.
Lexington, June 3, 1827.

_Dear Brown_,--I have at last arrived in this wealthy part of Kentucky, which I assure you is a treat for a man that has been so much exposed to the fatigues of travelling over cliffs, and swimming creeks, and all other inconveniences that man could imagine. I arrived at Winchester, Kentucky, where our old friend resides. It was two o'clock when I arrived, but I found him in his shop playing cards with a black journeyman old sledge, at twenty-five cents a game, and you ought to have seen him scrabble for the cards when I rapped upon the window. I left Winchester for Maysville, where I remained four days with our friend, the same old block of sociability; yet he tells me he does well in the stock trade. He says he sold forty odd horses in one year. Since he has lived in Kentucky, over two hundred, which you know is over fifty per year. From Maysville I crossed the river through the Sciota region, by the way of Portsmouth, then to Chillicothe; from there on to Zanesville, from there to Wheeling, and then to Washington, Pennsylvania; returned to Wheeling, then to Parkersburgh. I did not call at Marietta; there has some difficulty taken place in that region. From Parkersburgh to Charleston, Kanhaway, with but little delay. Our saline friends are great dealers in "coney." I met twenty-six in one day at the old "Col." He is doing his work clean, without any risk. There are, he tells me, upon an average, five horses sold per week from Sandy among the friends of the trade. I left Charleston; had a tedious journey to this city. Lexington is a humane place, but dangerous to move, unless you do it through some of the old wealthy friends of the trade. I must now say to you that I have done well in my small way. I have cleared over two hundred per month. I found our friend, of the Blue Lick region, who tells me the house trade is good along the road; that the coloured boys do it all, and are not suspected. (_In speaking of the house trade, he had reference to the entering of houses by the slaves, pillaging, &c., which would be laid to white men._) Well, now, I am through with my travels for the present. Let me give you some little of the history of our Dearborn brother, which I assure you is novel. I told you he would never do, and I suppose, ere this, you have found I was right. I cannot be fooled easy. You thought that from the simple fact that he traded in horses well, (_meaning that he stole horses well_,) that he would not fail to be useful anywhere I wished to place him; but he returned home, I suppose you discover, without a dollar, and made sixty the first night we arrived in Cincinnati, off of a cheese trader that slept in the adjoining room. He wanted to return the next day to the burgh, but I prevailed upon him to stop, as suspicion rested not upon us. He remained according to my request, and I never have come across such an industrious man; but he had not much courage, less than any man of his age I ever met, and not one particle of judgment in human nature. When we arrived, I cautioned him about trading with any of the brethren of the city without my consent, knowing, as I did, the city brethren were "celish;" however, he assured me his trade was "bogus;" that you had supplied him with cut quarters, which no other person dare offer, and that he had done well even with them. (Cut money was, at an early date, used as change; one dollar cut in four pieces answered as twenty-five cents each.) I found he was bent on the "bogus" trade, and I told him to hold on a few days, and that I would assist him to some; that I had not the first dollar, but would find out through the brethren when I returned from our friend's in the country--nine miles. I then left him at the boarding-house, and promised to return the next day. I returned according to promise; called at our boarding-house, and upon inquiry learned he was out in the city. I took a stroll up to our friend's, the coffee-house keeper, in Market street. While I was passing through the market-house, I passed by a man with a large load upon his back. I could not discover what the bulk was. I passed on to the coffee-house, where three of the boys were dividing one hundred and sixty-five dollars, the proceeds of the day's work, which, they informed me, they had obtained from one of the soft-shell brethren. That in the course of the day they had met a countryman, and seeing he was apparently upon the look-out for speculation, they had finally entered into conversation with him, and had accidentally shown him some bright half dollars, and told him they were counterfeit. "What," said he, "bogus?" "Bogus, indeed," said one. "And do you know what, bogus is?" He said he ought to, and they then tried him, and found him one of the right kind of brethren to skin; and that they did in the following manner: Finding that he had money and wanted "bogus," they set upon a plan to deceive him; which they did by showing him the new half dollars, and telling him they were good coin; and that if he wished he could have them at fifteen dollars for a hundred dollars of "bogus." He agreed to purchase one hundred and sixty-five dollars' worth, which they were to supply that evening. That they were to meet him in the Fifth street market-house, and deliver his bogus in a tobacco keg headed up. He of course took it for granted that all was honest. They separated from him, purchased a tobacco keg, filled it with stone-coal cinders, within an inch of the top, packing them very hard to make them weigh heavy. They then put a false head one inch from the top, upon which they put two hundred copper cents. They then placed another head upon that, confining it tight with a hoop. After preparing it, they rolled it into the market-house where they had met. He had paid them the one hundred and sixty-five dollars for the cinders, which he supposed to be the most beautiful bogus, and when he lifted the keg he was satisfied all was right; _and how could he doubt it, they were brethren!_ and they were then dividing the spoils. I suspected, from description, it was our Lawrenceburgh friend, but remained silent, and returned to my room where I knew I could ascertain. When I went, I discovered my friend just ascending the stairs, with a large keg upon his shoulder. "Halloo," said I, "what upon earth have you here?" He dropped the keg, as though he had been shot, making a crash to be heard a half mile distant, but fortunately no person about the house appeared much disturbed. The old lady came to the door, and wanted to know what was the matter. I told her my friend had fallen, but that no damage was done. She retired. As soon as he discovered it was me, he raised his burden once more, and carried it to the room. "Come in, sir," said he. "What have you here?" said I. "That I will show you, in a few minutes." I knew all the time, and though I was vexed, I could not refrain from laughter. "You laugh," said he, "and well you might, if you knew the speculation I had been making to-day." He soon got a hatchet to show me his treasure. I never saw a man so perfectly carried away at the prospect he had in store. He was nearly exhausted by carrying such a burden so far. The perspiration drops were oozing out of his forehead, and he effected the opening of the keg with no little trouble. "Now, sir," said he, "you may laugh, if you please; raise that head and see if there is not something in store to laugh at." I did as he bade. I lifted up the head which covered his treasure, when to his surprise a few black copper cents made their appearance. "Copper bogus," said I. "I believe in my soul they have mistaken; let's examine further." He soon discovered the false head, which he raised, and in a double surprise cried out, "My conscience, I won't trade. No, I will have my money back! I will sue them." "Who will you sue?" said I. He came to a stand, then remarked, "Really, I can't tell who they were. They gave me no name, but I will take them for swindling if they don't give it up. I will swear," said he--then he paused and I took the word from his mouth, and told him that I would swear that he was a fool, and had better return to Dearborn county and plough corn. He laid the coppers one side, being about two hundred, then carefully headed the keg up. We went to bed. During the night he arose. I heard him going downstairs. The next morning I discovered that both him and the keg were missing. I never heard from him afterwards, but hope, if he is at home, that you will hereafter keep him there.

Yours, in haste,

P.S. I hope you will answer this immediately. Direct to Nashville, Tennessee. This Brother is a true blue.

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[This describes the bearer to be CUNNING, TEMPERATE, TREACHEROUS, IMPRUDENT; size LOW and HEAVY; by profession a PHYSICIAN and a MERCHANT; disease RHEUMATISM and FACE DISFIGURED; age from FORTY to FORTY-FIVE; QUICK-SPOKEN.]

No. 9.
Lawrenceburgh, April 9, 1827.

_Friend Brown_,--I am happy to have the extreme pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance one of my most intimate friends. He visits the city on business, which may require assistance; if so, you can confer no greater favour on your humble servant, than by serving him.

Yours, in haste,

The following was taken from the same sheet, having been interlined in fine hand in sympathetic ink, which was entirely a secret to the bearer, and read when warm, as follows:

_In a side pocket made upon the inside of an old black velvet vest, you will find eighteen hundred dollars in United States money. In an old hair trunk, tied around with a rope, he carries twelve hundred dollars in silver. He is fond of spirits, and occasionally gets drunk, and when drunk, has no memory, and would not acknowledge the fact of being drunk for twice the amount. He is a man of wealth and of honour. Destroy this immediately._

The history connected with the above letters may be considered of great importance to explain the villanies of this band; and from the circumstances connected with this history, I have every reason to have full confidence that the same letters this note refers to, were the occasion of the bearer being robbed of some thirty-one hundred dollars. We will now give the foundation for our belief. During the examination of my original package of letters, I discovered a very familiar name attached to one of those apparent business letters, which caused me to examine the import, and upon so doing, I found that it contained the same which I have given, with a few omissions which I considered of importance to my personal safety, viz., the names of the parties, the place of residence of the man robbed, &c. When I found that I had a familiar name to so base an article, to satisfy myself that it was not a forgery, I examined the same person's signatures which had been written in the year 1827, and found they compared satisfactorily to my mind. I then set upon a plan to ascertain from the man who lost the money, without his having an idea of my intention, which I did as follows. I wrote to a responsible man living in the same place, to know of him if such a man of his village had ever lost any money, and if so, what amount, the date he lost it, &c.; to which I received the following brief note: "Sir,--You have written me upon a subject which I was not familiar with at the time I received your letter, but have made inquiry, and found that in the spring of 1827, the person alluded to in your letter was robbed while in Wheeling, on his way to Philadelphia, out of rising three thousand dollars: which money he has never heard of. He is a man in good circumstances, and was at that time, in fact he has always been, considered wealthy. I conversed with him one time upon the subject, but he dislikes to have it mentioned to him. You likewise wished me to inquire if he received any letters of introduction or recommendation previous to his departure, on the date mentioned. He had several, and with one exception, they were all from his best friends. One he had given him by a man residing in Lawrenceburgh, Indiana, was for the purpose of introducing him to Daniel Brown, a merchant of Dearborn county, whom he met in Cincinnati, on his (Brown's) return, and had but a few moments' time to converse with him, after he gave him the letter. You, therefore, know all I can ascertain about your request." I could then see through the whole lead of his misfortunes, and it is about in this way. The letter which he bore to Brown, having the particulars concerning his temperament, likewise the amount of money, &c., enabled Brown to set the band upon him, who robbed him, and then divided with Brown and his Lawrenceburgh friend. These letters I had transcribed and put them up and lectured to the citizens of Lawrenceburgh concerning the horrible fact of their existence; and these are the letters spoken of, that made the pigeon's flutter, and likewise caused so many threats of my assassination; and all that prevented them was, that they feared whoever might have the handling of the papers hereafter might handle them with less mercy.