Seth Wyman, a Life of Crime ~ Part II

. . .I saw lurking beneath a distant bearing towards me, rendered her the object of a passion. . .more enduring and at the time more powerful and dangerous to us both. ~ Seth Wyman

Goffstown, New Hampshire

Mrs. Chandler

Our cousin Seth Wyman (6C5X), undaunted by any of his past scrapes and close calls, continued his life of thefts, grillings by the sheriff and a lack of evidence keeping him out of jail. Nothing was safe from his pilfering eye: tools on a job, merchandise in stores, items left in people's yards and even clothing drying on the line.

Seth's father, who continued to support him in spite of his son's errant ways, had left Seth a farm in Deering. Seth exchanged this for a farm nearer his father and employed a Mr. Chandler to work for him. Mr. Chandler had married a distant cousin of ours, Wealthy Loomis (7C5X). Wealthy descended Joseph Loomis(1C11X) , a cousin of our grandfather Edward Loomis (10GGF) of Ipswich. Wealthy would become an important person in Seth's life.

In my business with him (Chandler) I became rather intimately acquainted with his family, which consisted of his wife and three small children. He wife was an accomplished, well-educated woman, and, what was more to me, very handsome, being called, before her rmarriage, the belle of Needham. . .She was still very young, only twenty-three, having been married to Mr. Chandler while yet in her teens. . .a bold, determined disposition, that I saw lurking beneath a distant bearing towards me, rendered her the object of a passion. . .more enduring and at the time more powerful and dangerous to us both.

Seth and Wealthy had not yet consummated their own relations when Wealthy confessed that she had decided to leave her husband and that she liked Seth "better than she did him or any body else on earth."

The very next morning Seth saw Wealthy "coming towards me, with a young child in her arms." Chandler, on hearing her plans "had driven her from the house with threats and blows". Wealthy went with Seth to his father's house and stayed there with him. Chandler, however, "came and took the child away from its mother, which was to her the severest part of this unlucky affair."

Seth soon learned that the townspeople had become "very much excited, and seemed determined to take her from me, and also to secure me for the crime of adultery." The couple decided the best course of action was for Wealthy to go and stay with her father. The separation proved too much for Seth and, on the third day, he went to her father's house to see her. Dyer Loomis (6C6X) was not pleased to see the cause of his daughter's downfall.

When Mr. Loomis turned and saw who it was, he rose, and seizing the shovel. . .rushed at me furiously with it raised over his head, prepared to wield a tremendous blow. I sprang upon him, however, before the blow fell, and wrested the shovel from his hands.

Seth managed to quiet Dyer down and was able to talk with Wealthy and plan future meetings. The family kept such a close watch on her, however, that their meetings were always cut short. To make matters worse, Seth found out from a friend that Chandler had gotten a warrant against him. Already persona non grata in Goffstown, Seth decided the best course of action would be to go on the lam and leave the state.

After hearing that Wealthy's brother Samuel (7C5X) was waiting for him with a rifle, Seth decided not to try and see Wealthy before he left. He sent a message to her "with exhortations to remain true to me. . .I should return next spring, and hoped then to be able to greet her as my wedded wife." Seth's father told had him he would do everything in his power to resolve the situation so that Seth could return.

Seth ended this episode with an expression of regret:

Thus occurred an event, which was ever after to be a curse upon me and the companion of my guilt. Thus was a cherished and heretofore virtuous young woman, who had been guarded even from a rude touch of the wind, and had been loved with an affection pure and lasting, had it not been for her own guilty passions, brought suddenly into the dark paths of vice and its ever-present companion--misery. After that first departure from the path of rectitude and virtue, her descent was gradual, but sure.

the army life

In Boston, Seth's new plan was to become a sailor but that idea led him instead to "a regularly organized band of land pirates." The group targeted "dwellings in the thickest and richest parts of the city" and Seth was glad to join them. In one house, he foolishly went into the bedroom of the owners and was chased and almost caught.

For no other apparent reason other than hearing guns go off at Fort Independence, Seth decided to go and enlist in the army. He and his pirate cronies divided up their plunder and Seth took himself over to the fort. There was no room for more enlistments but the captain at the fort told him he could stay with the men until something came up. Most of his day was taken up with "drinking, playing cards, dancing and wandering about."

True to his nature, Seth found a group of soldiers that liked to go into town to "beg, buy, or steal, whatever eatables were not suppied by their regualar rations." On his first day out, Seth was able to nab some turkeys and, with what the other soldiers got, they had "every thing necessary to a drunken feast and frolic." This stealing and begging went on every day.

In addition to his stealing, Seth's fighting days weren't over yet either. He described a fight he had with a fellow sailor over a card game:

The words were no sooner out of his mouth, than I caught him by the nose and gave it a tremendous pinch. . ."you be d---d! and take that--at that--" was his answer, emphasized with two right and left blows over my dizzy noddle.

The fight went on for some time until Seth finally "gave him a blow directly in the neck under his ear, and at the same time used my left hand on the other side of his head." The man "fell heavily--senseless--to the floor and the blood trickled from his mouth and nose." Then, the other soldiers "staggered forward to prevent me from committing any further violence."

After his adventures with the men at Fort Independence, Seth gave up his idea of enlisting in the army.

back to a life of crime and roguery

Back to his old ways, Seth plied his craft in Boston, Beverly and Salem. He made a decent living selling his stolen goods. He then decided to go up to Bucksport, Maine where he still owned property. Along the way, in Newburyport, MA, he found himself in need of supplies. With his large coat to hide his booty, he went into an English good store and gathered items from the shelf until he "found that my bundle was getting too large to be carried without suspicion." In Portland, Maine, he stole a coat and a watch.

On the final leg of his journey to Bucksport, Seth stopped to stay with some friends from his hometown of Goffstown. He, of course, took advantage of their hospitality by pretending to be a true Christian in order to get close to one of the daughters in the family. He soon left that place with a promise to return to her which he would never keep.

While passing through a town near Augusta, Maine, Seth played a very dirty trick on some "frequenters of a grog-shop of the lowest kind" that he felt had "mortally offended" him. He and a friend "deposited a sufficient quantity of Tartar Emetric in their pail of water. . .to thoroughly vomit twenty-five men." Worse, they put a rope around each door so the men couldn't exit the building.

They shouted with all their strength, and we could distinctly hear the cries of "murder! We're poisoned, oh!. . ." This was revenge and pure joy to us.

Possibly the saddest part of this story is the fact that the tavern keeper was "prosecuted and fined for keeping an irregular house. . ."

Shortly after arriving in Bucksport, Seth learned that his paramour Mrs. Chandler had been reunited with her husband and it was finally safe for him to return home.

Back in Goffstown

According to Seth's narrative, the year is now 1805. He is 21 years old and has certainly packed a lot of living into those 21 years with more to come.

Almost as soon as he arrived back in Goffstown, he got a note from Worthy wanting to see him. Probably to save himself from more trouble, he "declined going, and sent back word to her, that it was best that all connection and acquaintance between us should cease." She then sent a "more urgent message" but Seth still refused to see her.

Life in Goffstown, however, was still fraught with problems. Seth wrote that many of his old acquaintances "would be glad to see me flogged" and he was not wrong. He describes what happened when he went to vote:

. . .a store-tender. . .who wished to give me. . .what I had never received -- a sound whipping . . . He contrived a plan with eight or ten others. . .They soon approached me in a solid body. As he came up, I drew back, and, with a rather solid, weighty argument, soon convinced him that it would be his best policy to fall back. . .

Though the other men had started the fight, the sheriff came the next day and Seth had to pay a fine for punching the store-tender. Feeling that the charge was "very unjust," Seth vowed revenge but that desire had to be put on the back burner when a much bigger issue slapped him in the face. Worthy's urgings that he come and see her became insistent. She finally sent her sister to tell him that "she was like to have a child" of his.

Worthy was then living with her husband at her father's house. With Seth's return, however, her husband quickly realized that his wife was still determined to leave him. He decided to give up on his wife and leave town. After Chandler's departure, Seth's friends advised him to see an attorney in Manchester, NH about the legalities of having a relationship with Worthy. The attorney, Esq. Stark, was most probably Caleb Stark, son of the famous Revolutionary War hero, General John Stark.

Seth never related what the attorney told him but, when he retuned to Goffstown, he had Worthy come to live with him at his father's house.

We both found, however, that the path of licentious and lawless indulgence was not by any means altogether one of pleaure, but that it was abundantly strown with thorns. Our neighbors were up in arms about our affair, and seemed determined to have us punished in some way. . .We were obliged to sleep in barns, under trees, and in ever secret and out-of-the-way place, in order to preserve ourselves from an attack in the night.

Mr. Chandler returned from Salem and proposed that, to settle affairs, Seth pay him $100 as well as a bond for the child soon to be born. Seth felt "this cheap enough to purchase peace for Mrs. Chandler in her present situation." Seth's payout, however didn't completely satisfy Chandler, who was legally able to take everything that belonged to his wife from her father's house, including all her clothing. Seth retaliated by finding where the clothes were and stealing them back.

Note: Throughout his narration, Seth never referred to his paramour as anything but "Mrs. Chandler" and later "my wife."

trouble catches up with Seth and Mrs. Chandler

Now that he was with Worthy who was soon to have a baby, Seth resolved to be better. His neighbors, however, had other ideas. One man in particular, Cilley, had it in for him.

Cilley and his drunken gang continued troubling us in every way they could imagine, and threatened us with something worse that was yet to come. . .doing everything in their power to injure and trouble me. I kept on my guard pretty well. . .sleeping most of the time under thick trees. . .I lived pretty well, for there was nothing in the neighborhood but what I helped myself to, it I wanted it. . .I frequently stole and injured the property of my enemies, not because I wanted it myself, but to injure them.

The law, however, was about to catch up with Seth. In February of 1806, He stole into Cilley's house and stole his "handsome silver watch." A large posse of men came to Seth's house to search for the watch to no avail. Cilley, down but not out, decided on another course of action. He had Seth arrested "for the crime of adultery." He was brought before a justice.

For want of bail, I was obliged to go to jail, and at last really saw the inside of Amherst Jail, where I had been expecting to stop for many years. I was put in one of the criminal cells with four criminals; two of whom were in for passing counterfeit money, the third -- a negro -- for illicit connexion with a white girl, and the fourth for setting the others at liberty.

And so it was that Seth met the two men who were to introduce him to a whole new life of crime. But before that life commenced, Seth had to get himself out of jail. With other men in the prison, he conspired to make his escape. The men worked for days moving stone and sawing bars. Just as all was set for the jailbreak, their plot was discoved and the lot of them, including Seth, thrown into the dungeon.

Meanwhile, back in town "Cilley. . .came down to my wife's father's wither she had gone when they took me away, and took her prisoner." Cilley's plan was to make her family pay to get her back, otherwise he would have her prosecuted for adultry as well. The family settled with Cilley "on the conditions that they should pay him. . .for his trouble, and that Mrs. Chandler would leave the town."

Seth and Worthy's adventures will continue in our next post.