The Last of the Highwaymen

As printed in Samuel Adams Drake (1884)

Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Samuel Adams Drake · 1884 · Boston and eastern Massachusetts

MICHAEL MARTIN, alias Captain Lightfoot, after a checkered career in Ireland, liis native country, and in Scotland, as a highway robber, became in 1819 a fugitive to America. He first landed at Salem, where he obtained employ- ment as a farm-laborer. But a life of honest toil not being so congenial to him. as that of a bandit, he again took to his old occupation on the road, this time making Canada the scene of his exploits. After committing many robberies there and in Vermont and New Hampsliire, and always eluding capture, Martin at length arrived in Boston. He at once began his bold operations upon tlie highway ; but here his usual good luck deserted him. His first and last victim was Major John Bray, of Boston. Martin had somehow found out that His Excellency Governor Brooks intended giving a dinner-party at his mansion in Medford on a certain afternoon, and he had determined to waylay some of the company on their return, shrewdly guessing that they might be well worth the picking. In fact, as Major Bray was driving leisurely homeward in his chaise over the Medford turnpike, he was suddenly stopped by a masked horseman, who presented a pistol and sternly commanded him to deliver up his valuables. 120 NEW-ENGLAND LEGENDS. Tlie place was a lonely one, and well chosen for the robber's pur- pose. The astounded Major handed over his watch and his purse. Having secured his booty, the highwayman wheeled his horse, gave him the spur, and galloped oif ; while his frightened avA crestfallen victim, lashing his horse to a run, raised a hue- and-cry at the nearest house. Martin fled. He was hotly pursued, and was taken, after a chase of a hundred miles, asleep in bed at Springfield. The officers brought him back, and lodged him in East Cambridge jail to await his trial. He was tried at the next assizes for highway robbery, was convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. This being the first trial occurring under the statute punish- ing such an offence, it naturally created a great deal of stir, and when the prisoner was brought to the bar, the court-room was thronged with curious spectators. Throughout the proceedings the prisoner was perfectly cool. As the pupil of the celebrated Thunderbolt, he had a reputation to maintain ; and when the judge, putting on the black cap, pronounced the awful sentence of death, he dryly observed : " Well, that 's the worst you can do for me." The doomed man, however, made one desperate efibrt to escape from prison. He had found some way to procure a tile, with which he filed off his irons so that he could remove them whenever he liked ; and when the turnkey one morning came into the cell, he being off his guard, tlie prisoner, using his irons as a weapon, felled him to the ground with a savage blow on the' head, and leaving him stunned and bleeding upon the floor of the cell, rushed out of the open door into the prison-yard. Tlie outer walls were too high to be scaled, and free passage into the street was barred by a massive oaken gate. But this did not stop the resolute highwayman, who was a man of herculean strength. Dashing himself repeatedly, with all his force, against it, he at last succeeded in breaking the gate open, and passing quicldy through, he emerged into the street beyond ; but being exhausted by his frantic efforts to escape, after a short flight his pursuers overtook and secured him. He was loaded with irons and chained to his cell. After this desperate attempt to gain his liberty, he was guarded with greater vigilance until the day appointed for his execution, when the " Last of the High- waymen" paid the penalty of his crimes upon the scaffold.

Samuel Adams Drake, A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore in Prose and Poetry (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884)