Killer Colt (45 page)

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The contrast between the grim jailhouse nuptials of John Colt and Caroline Henshaw and the wedding, fourteen years later, of Sam Colt and Elizabeth Jarvis couldn’t have been more stark. The ceremony, held at the Protestant Episcopal Church at Middletown, Connecticut, on June 5, 1856, was conducted by the Right Reverend T. C. Brownell, bishop of Connecticut. The bride was bedecked in “a dress and jewelry rumored to cost eight thousand dollars”—the equivalent of more than two hundred thousand in today’s dollars. The wedding cake, standing six feet tall, was trimmed with confectionery pistols and topped with a spun-sugar colt.

Following the ceremony, the entire bridal party took the evening express to Manhattan, where Sam had rented one of the city’s largest hotels, the St. Nicholas, for a gala reception. The next morning, the newlyweds set off by ship on a six-month honeymoon. After an extended stay in London, they traveled to Holland, Bavaria, Vienna, the Tyrolean Alps, and finally Russia, where—along with “princes and princesses and top-ranking diplomats and military officers” from throughout Europe—they were guests at the coronation of Czar Alexander II.
⁸

Shortly after their return to Hartford, they moved into the spectacular residence known as Armsmear (“the mansion that ‘arms’ had built on the ‘mere,’ or lowlands, of Hartford’s South Meadow”).
⁹
Designed by Sam himself, the massive brownstone building, with its five-story tower, its steel and glass conservatories, its exotic minarets and domes, stood as “the perfect model of a Victorian-age mogul’s idea of opulence and elegance.”
¹⁰
Its nearly two dozen rooms—dining room, drawing room, music room, billiard room, ballroom, reception room, library, picture gallery, and various private quarters—were outfitted with imported custom-made furniture, carpets, drapery, and other items of décor costing the equivalent of more than six hundred thousand dollars in today’s money. The sweeping grounds of the estate—with its private garden, deer park, artificial lake, terraced lawn, spectacular greenhouses, marble fountains and statuary—was designed by Copeland and Cleveland of Boston, “one of the nation’s first and most respected landscape architectural firms.”
¹¹

Between the day that he and Elizabeth moved into Armsmear and Sam’s early death of gout and rheumatic fever at the age of forty-seven, only five years elapsed. Still, despite the heart-wrenching loss of his first two children (both memorialized, of course, in the funereal verse of his friend Mrs. Sigourney), those years “were the most stable and prosperous of his life.” Some of his most contented hours were spent within his “private room,” where Sam “gathered the pictured forms and mementos of those he loved best.”
¹²
Among these precious items were portraits of his long-departed mother and sisters, marble statues of his two tragically short-lived infants, and, it is said, an oil painting of his doomed but indomitable brother, John Caldwell Colt.

I owe my greatest debt of thanks to Professor Richard Vangermeersch, distinguished historian of American accounting, who graciously shared his research material on the Colt case and offered vital assistance throughout the project.

I am also grateful to the following people for their kindness and generosity: Randy Blomquist, Mickey Cartin, Kenneth Cobb, Dale Flesher, Bob Kenworthy, the Hon. Diane Kiesel, Richard Morgan, Karen Nickeson, Richard Pope, Richard Roberts, David Smith, Jamie Stockton, and, as always, Marianne Stein and Evelyn Silverman. The Research Foundation of the City of New York provided generous assistance in the form of a PSC-CUNY Research Award.

I can’t adequately convey my appreciation for the love and support of my wife and partner, Kimiko Hahn. To describe my feelings about our life together, I must turn to the words of John Colt’s contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I am glad to the brink of fear.”

PROLOGUE: NEW YORK CITY, FRIDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 17, 1841

1.
We know these details of Samuel Adams’s dress and gait from the trial testimony of his acquaintance John Johnson. See Thomas Dunphy and Thomas J. Cummins,
Remarkable Trials of All Countries
(New York: Dossy & Company, 1870), pp. 247–48.

2.
Besides Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” my evocation of the street scene is drawn from several sources, primarily Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Man of the Crowd,” Charles Dickens’s
American Notes for General Circulation
, and Nathaniel Parker Willis’s
Open-Air Musings in the City
. Excerpts from the last two can be found in Phillip Lopate’s anthology
Writing New York: A Literary Anthology
(New York: Library of America, 2008), pp. 51–64, 74–90.

3.
For example, see J. Disturnell,
The Classified Mercantile Directory for the Cities of New-York and Brooklyn
(New York: J. Disturnell, 1837), and E. Porter Belden,
New-York: Past, Present, and Future
(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1849), pp. 276–450.

4.
On the very day of Samuel Adams’s disappearance, the
New York Herald
ran a prominent story, “The Case of Mary Rogers—The Place of the Murder,” accompanied by a large woodcut illustration showing “The House Where Mary Rogers Was Last Seen Alive.” See
New York Herald
, September 17, 1841, p. 2. For a full account of the McLeod case, see William Renwick Riddell, “An International Murder Trial,”
Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology
, vol. 10, no. 2 (August 1919): pp. 176–83.

5.
For a description of Scudder’s American Museum, see Neil Harris,
Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 39.

6.
Dunphy and Cummins,
Remarkable Trials
, p. 248.

7.
See
Holden’s Dollar Magazine
, vol. 6 (1851): p. 187.

PART ONE: FRAIL BLOOD

1.
The school was later renamed the American Asylum at Hartford for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons.

According to local historian Mary K. Talcott, Captain Lord (1611–62) “was one of the most energetic and efficient men in the colony; when the first troop of horse was organized, he was chosen commander, March 11, 1658, and distinguished himself in the Indian Wars. He was constable, 1642; townsman, 1645; represented Hartford in the General Court from 1656 until his death.” Also see J. Hammond Trumbull, ed.,
The Memorial History of Hartford County Connecticut 1633–1884
(Boston: Edward L. Osgood, 1886), p. 249.

2.
William Hosley,
Colt: The Making of an American Legend
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), pp. 14, 228. For more about the complicity of New England merchants in the infamous “Triangle Trade,” see Janet Siskind,
Rum and Axes: The Rise of a Connecticut Merchant Family, 1795–1850
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

3.
Hosley,
American Legend
, p. 15; Josiah Gilbert Holland,
History of Western Massachusetts
(Springfield, MA: Samuel Bowles and Company, 1855), p. 225.

4.
Jack Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker: The Story of Sam Colt and His Six-Shot Peacemaker
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 3.

5.
Miriam Davis Colt,
Went to Kansas
(Watertown, MA: L. Ingalls & Co., 1862), p. 250; William B. Edwards,
The Story of Colt’s Revolver: The Biography of Col. Samuel Colt
(New York: Castle Books, 1957), p. 15.

6.
Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, p. 2.

1.
In addition to his sisters Margaret (b. 1806) and Sarah (b. 1808), Sam Colt grew up with three brothers: John (b. 1810), Christopher, Jr. (b. 1812), and James (b. 1816). Two other children—Mary (b. 1819) and Norman (b. 1821)—did not outlive childhood.

2.
Madison
(WI)
Express
, November 7, 1841, p. 3.

3.
See
Life and Letters of John C. Colt, Condemned to Be Hung on the Eighteenth of November, 1842, for the Murder of Samuel Adams
(New York:
Extra Tattler
, October 21, 1842), p. 3; Charles F. Powell,
An Authentic Life of John C. Colt
(Boston: S. N. Dickinson, 1842), p. 14.

4.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, pp. viii–ix.

5.
Ibid. Also see Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 16, and Gertrude Hecker Winders,
Sam Colt and His Gun
(New York: John Day Company, 1959), pp. 13–15.

6.
John D. Lawson,
American State Trials
, vol. 7 (St. Louis: F. H. Thomas Law Book Co., 1917), p. 464; Henry Barnard,
Armsmear
(New York: Alvord Printer, 1866), p. 295.

7.
Lydia H. Sigourney,
Letters to My Pupils
(New York: Robert Carver & Brothers, 1853), pp. 233, 241.

8.
See Jane Benardete’s biographical entry in
American Women Writers
, ed. Lina Mainero (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982), pp. 78–81.

9.
Lydia H. Sigourney,
Letters of Life
(New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1868), pp. 186–87.

10.
Ibid., pp. 203–18.

11.
They are part of the Colt Family Papers, donated to the University of Rhode Island Library Special Collections in 1989.

1.
The quote is taken from Daniel Walker Howe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 38. Though Howe is not referring specifically to Christopher Colt, his description of the quintessential American male of the era applies perfectly to the patriarch of the Colt clan (as well as to his most famous son): “This was not a relaxed, hedonistic, refined, or indulgent society … The man who got ahead in often primitive conditions did so by means of innate ability, hard work, luck, and sheer willpower … Impatient of direction, he took pride in his personal accomplishments. An important component of his drive to succeed was a willingness … to innovate and take risks, to try new methods and locations.”

2.
See Hosley,
American Legend
, p. 228, n. 15; “Cattle Show,”
Connecticut Courant
, November, 3, 1818, p. 2; “Savings Society in the City of Hartford,”
Connecticut Courant
, July 6, 1819, p. 3.

3.
Sigourney,
Letters of Life
, pp. 243–48, 266–80.

4.
Alice Morehouse Walker,
Historic Hadley: A Story of the Making of a Famous Massachusetts Town
(New York: Grafton Press, 1906), pp. 92–93. Also see
History of the Hopkins Fund, Grammar School and Academy, in Hadley, Mass
. (Amherst, MA: Amherst Record Press, 1890).

5.
The bylaws of the academy can be found in
History of the Hopkins Fund
, pp. 80–81.

6.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, p. 15.

7.
The calculation is based on a yearly tuition fee of $12, plus boarding expenses of $1.50 per week for forty-four weeks. (According to official records, the academic year at Hopkins Academy consisted of four terms commencing on the first Wednesdays of December, March, June, and September, with four vacations of two weeks each. See
History of the Hopkins Fund
, p. 81.)

8.
See Samuel Rezneck, “The Depression of 1819–1822, A Social History,”
American Historical Review
, vol. 39, no. 1 (October 1933): pp. 28–47; Murray N. Rothbard,
The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1962).

9.
Barnard,
Armsmear
, p. 296.

10.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, p. 18.

11.
Ibid., p. 19.

12.
See Hosley,
American Legend
, p. 15; Luther S. Cushing,
Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts
, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1865), p. 232; Siskind,
Rum and Axes
, pp. 78–89.

13.
The poem is appended to Powell’s book as “Note A.” Another poem on the subject by Mrs. Sigourney is inscribed in Sarah Ann Colt’s school notebook:

“On the death of an infant son of Mr. Colt’s who was buried on the first anniversary of its birth, Sunday May 5th 1822”

1.
For different accounts of young Sam and his first firearm, see Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 16; Winders,
Colt and His Gun
, p. 18; Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, p. 9; Barnard,
Armsmear
, p. 298.

2.
As many old-timers saw it, Colonel Colt actually improved on the design of the Creator: “God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal,” as the saying goes.

3.
The entire poem, which appears in Sigourney’s
Letters to My Pupils
, pp. 234–36, reads as follows: