Duel with the Devil

by Paul Collins

  “The eyes were dark—dark as midnight—and soft, and sad,” she writes of the doomed young woman, whose ringlets were “black, and the soft, glossy curls fell around the young face like a sable curtain.”

  However true or fictive such recollections were, Connah could give readers one absolutely solid empirical fact: Her family still remembered, decades after it had vanished beneath the vaulting tenements of the city, where the old well was located.

  “Were you to ask me now to give you the exact location of this well,” Connah wrote, “I should tell you to go to the corner of Spring and Greene Streets, and, being there, you might feel assured that you were in the immediate neighborhood, possibly upon the very spot where the waters of the Manhattan Well rose seventy years ago.”

  When it was published in 1870, though, this page of her novel contained a footnote—the only time, in fact, during the story itself that the author used one—because there had been a startling development.

  “Since the above was written,” she noted in amazement, “the exact location of the well has been discovered.”

  THE WELL is still there. It has been there all along—it becomes lost for a lifetime, found again, then lost for another lifetime still.

  Its first rediscovery came just as Connah was finishing her novel. Under the headline “Old New-York,” the New York Times for April 18, 1869, reported: “The old well, known as the Manhattan Well, down which was thrown the corpse of GULIELMA SANDS, murdered, as is believed, by her lover, LEVI WEEKS, some seventy years ago, and the locality of which had been forgotten, has been rediscovered.”

  The occupant of 129 Spring Street had been digging out a flower garden when they uncovered the infamous relic. “It is of large diameter,” the reporter added, “and was covered over with large flat stones.” And the location—behind a building on the corner of Spring and Greene Streets—was just where Connah’s family had said it was.

  New Yorkers had been going about their business in the spot for years without any inkling of its history. For a time the address had been that of a pawnbroker; after that, it had been a mail order depot for “O. Spotswood’s Antidote for Tobacco,” which promised relief from “the extreme nausea and disgust inflicted on many ladies by their male relatives and friends who persist in Chewing Tobacco.” In its latest incarnation, the building was a German beer hall frequented by political radicals; it was there, carelessly walking over the maiden’s infamous murder scene, that a Communist meeting elected Victorian firebrand Victoria Woodhull as a central council member.

  Every few decades, a newspaper would recall the tragedy and visit the spot again; if they were in the mood for storytelling, like one Brooklyn Daily Eagle reporter, they’d also claim that “on the anniversary of her murder the Quaker girl rises from her tomb and goes wailing through the house.” In 1889, another reporter was amused to note that the current occupant shared Levi’s old profession, if not any concern over the supernatural: “a sturdy German carpenter works above the well where she was murdered and never thinks about it.”

  In 1957, the Times’ top local reporter—Meyer Berger, a Pulitzer Prize winner—got the notion to go back again. He took a cab to “an untidy factory alley” one October evening and found a melancholy scene: “Winds stir sooty papers in it and high walls hem it in. In twilight it has a sinister, brooding air.” With a dramatic flourish, he snatched up one of the discarded papers, fashioned it into a torch, and wandered down into the dark alley while the waiting cabbie asked what he was doing. “Just checking on a murder,” Berger explained, “a girl was killed here.”

  And then it was forgotten again.

  In 2010, the owner of the Manhattan Bistro set about excavating his basement at the corner of Spring and Greene to make more space for his wine bottles and other supplies. He unexpectedly struck an expanse of brick in the dirt—a wall where there wasn’t supposed to be one. Only it wasn’t a wall—the brick structure curved, back and back, and then around—it was a well.

  He had, for the first time since 1799, uncovered the very depths of the murder scene. The well now stands as a crumbling brick column, casting its shadow over the widened restaurant basement—and the owners and employees like to trade stories about mysterious flying glasses, ghostly dropped bottles, and restaurant lights suddenly dimming.

  But then, from the very day that Elma Sands’s body was discovered, her murder has evoked an impulse to tell stories—even among those at the center of the case. In the years after the trial, it was said that Levi’s defense counsel became fond of recalling how he’d dramatically held up a candle to the face of Richard David Croucher in the courtroom, revealing him to a shopkeeper as the man who had been spreading falsehoods about Levi. But in the retellings, his unmasking of Croucher became more damning, and the story kept getting grander:

  “He used to say that he once saved a man from being hanged by a certain arrangement of candles in a court-room. As the trial proceeded, suspicions arose against the principal witness.… He set forth the facts which bore against the man, and then seizing two candelabras from the table, he held them up toward the witness, and exclaimed, ‘Behold the murderer, gentlemen!’ ”

  The tale had a curious twist. When Hamilton’s son recounted it, it was the late major-general who had held up the candelabras—but when Burr’s biographer told the story, it was the colonel who had revealed the murderer.

  Some rivalries, it seems, never will be settled.

  [ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]

  THIS BOOK SIMPLY COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT THE INSPIRATION of my sons, Bramwell and Morgan, or without the love of my wife, Jennifer, who is the first reader of everything that I write.

  Marc Thomas, as always, valiantly held down the fort while I was off poking around in musty ledgers. My many thanks also go to my agent, Michelle Tessler, and my editors, Rick Horgan and Nate Roberson—and a tip of the powdered wig to John Glusman for getting this project rolling.

  I remain indebted to many librarians, particularly those at Portland State University, the New-York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the University of Oregon. A special thanks as well to Sally Stanley of the Friends of the Sands Ring Homestead, and to Ted O’Reilly of the NYHS, who drew my attention to their wonderful 1798–1803 diary of Joshua Brookes.

  Finally, I’d like to thank my predecessors in this subject. Because much of this book derives from primary sources, later commentators on the case don’t show up too often. But it was the work of Julius Goebel, Jr., Mildred McGehee, and Estelle Fox Kleiger that kept the memory of the case and its participants alive in the past fifty years, and their earlier studies were helpful in pointing me toward some of those original sources.

  [NOTES]

  While the competing trial accounts of David Longworth, James Hardie, and William Coleman were crucial for this book’s exploration of the death of Elma Sands, my portrayal of life in New York frequently draws upon the newspapers of the era. They are abbreviated in the notes as follows:

  New-York American Citizen (NYAC)

  New-York Commercial Advertiser (NYCA)

  New-York Daily Advertiser (NYDA)

  Greenleaf’s [New-York Journal; New Daily Advertiser] (GNDA)

  New-York Mercantile Advertiser (NYMA)

  New-York Evening Post (NYEP)

  New-York Gazette (NYG)

  New-York Spectator (NYS)

  New-York Weekly Museum (NYWM)

  1. THE GREAT SICKNESS

  1 Giant lobster claws: “Journal of Joshua Brookes,” 555.

  2 Gilbert Stuart’s grand oil portrait: NYDA, 22 February 1798.

  3 two shillings to view: American Minerva (New York, N.Y.), 26 July 1796.

  4 Baker’s splendid Electrical Machines: Diary; or, Loudon’s Register (New York, N.Y.), 8 May 1797.

  5 “a TRANSPARENT MONUMENT”: Ibid., 31 October 1793.

  6 Greenwich Street: NYCA, 23 July 1799.

  7 a menagerie: Diary; or, Loudon’s Register (New Yor
k, N.Y.), 8 May 1797.

  8 wax figures: American Minerva (New York, N.Y.), 26 February 1796.

  9 Musical Concert Clock is for sale: NYCA, 23 July 1799.

  10 signs hung along the streets: Morhouse, “Boy’s Reminiscences,” 344.

  11 William Maxwell’s, Distiller: NYDA, 14 January 1795.

  12 next shop over for some godless tract: NYMA, 19 March 1803.

  13 gunsmith Joseph Finch: NYEP, 10 December 1803.

  14 tinsmith Tom Eagles: Public Advertiser, 20 April 1808.

  15 involving the boiling of coffee: Ukers, All About Coffee, 699.

  16 Ben Franklin claimed you could spot visiting New Yorkers: Monaghan and Lowenthal, This Was New York, 30.

  17 with elevated first stories and stoops: Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 47.

  18 “two lean men to walk abreast”: Stone, History of New York City, 187.

  19 “totally stripped of trees”: Koeppel, Water for Gotham, 50.

  20 shining brass pumps installed along the thoroughfare: Ibid., 34.

  21 nearly caused local wells to run dry: Ibid., 50.

  22 “The water is very bad to drink”: Quoted in ibid., 55.

  23 more free-spirited cousin Elma: William Coleman, Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks, 33.

  24 tried for three nights to pull down a local brothel: NYG, 18 July 1799.

  25 “We understand (for we resort to no such place)”: Ibid.

  26 thousand rioters … called out a regiment of mounted troops: NYWM, 20 July 1799.

  27 “The plea is, the necessity of correcting abuses”: NYG, 19 July 1799.

  28 “BRANDY Exchanged for PORK”: NYDA, 10 July 1799.

  29 “a Negro MAN, named Henry”: NYS, 3 July 1799.

  30 “A letter received in town yesterday”: Ibid., 6 July 1799.

  31 along the Atlantic seaboard for nearly a century: Janvier, In Old New York, 143.

  32 “Those periods, in general, have been most distinguished”: Webster, Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases 2:15.

  33 “vessels from one of the sickly ports”: Hardie, Account of the Yellow Fever, 8.

  34 blamed on a load of rotten coffee: Powell, Bring Out Your Dead, 17.

  35 “exhalations from the ground”: Hardie, Account of the Yellow Fever, 8.

  36 Hosack later estimated that fully one-twelfth of Manhattan’s: Koeppel, Water for Gotham, 121.

  37 “an almost innumerable number”: Arnebeck, “Yellow Fever in New York City.”

  38 “in all the streets where buildings”: Ibid.

  39 “The late rains in the city”: Powell, Bring Out Your Dead, 23.

  40 “Idle tales … A false report”: NYS, 13 July 1799.

  41 Philadelphia had misled other cities: Arnebeck, “Yellow Fever in New York City.”

  42 In the dock at that moment: NYMA, 13 July 1799.

  43 Philadelphia’s board of health: NYCA, 17 July 1799.

  44 Bleecker, would be one of the first to find out: Bleecker, Diary, 26 July 1799.

  45 “they void and vomit blood”: Powell, Bring Out Your Dead, 13.

  46 the fever’s stigmata: Ibid., 27.

  47 “by no means alarming”: NYMA, 18 July 1799.

  48 now in Providence: GNDA, 24 July 1799.

  49 in Newburyport: NYG, 29 July 1799.

  50 in Philadelphia: NYDA, 30 July 1799.

  51 was dead from yellow fever: Bleecker, Diary, 23 August 1799.

  2. A BOARDINGHOUSE BY CANDLELIGHT

  1 By September 11, 1799: Laight, Diaries, September 1799 entries.

  2 “Rumor of Yellow Fever”: Ibid., 3 July 1799.

  3 “Dog days begin”: Ibid., 29 July 1799.

  4 “A shower in the night”: Ibid., 10 August 1799.

  5 “Oh, oh!”: Ibid., 11 September 1799.

  6 “near 1/3 of the inhabitants”: Ibid., 27 August 1799.

  7 “Autumn Residences” of those “removed for the sickly season”: NYG, 14 September 1799.

  8 “As soon as this dreadful scourge”: Janvier, In Old New York, 140.

  9 firing off muskets and cannons: Powell, Bring Out Your Dead, 51.

  10 kill a little girl: Bleecker, Diary, 24 September 1799.

  11 Lee’s True and Genuine Bilious Pills: NYMA, 30 July 1799.

  12 Four Herb Pills: NYWM, 10 July 1799, 4.

  13 New York Anti-Bilious Pills: NYCA, 16 September 1799.

  14 Laight had closely allied: Bank of the Manhattan Company, Act of Incorporation of the Manhattan Company, 7.

  15 landlady hadn’t stayed around: Hardie, Impartial Account of the Trial, 11.

  16 flour mill he’d tried: GNDA, 19 February 1794.

  17 a mechanic and an inventor: Aurora General Advertiser (Philadelphia), 23 February 1798.

  18 running a general store: Longworth’s American Almanack (1798), n.p.

  19 running a millinery: Kleiger, Trial of Levi Weeks, 2.

  20 apprentice, William Anderson: William Coleman, Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks, 46.

  21 recently immigrated English merchant: Ibid., 43.

  22 Dapper and beginning to gray: Alexandria (Va.) Expositor, 22 July 1803.

  23 as he approached the age of forty: Philadelphia Gazette, 10 July 1800.

  24 his tall and thin form: Alexandria (Va.) Expositor, 22 July 1803.

  25 another boarder, named Margaret Clark: William Coleman, Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks, 19.

  26 a roomer but not a boarder: Ibid., 43.

  27 Humbert’s bread and Aunt Roach’s pies: Morhouse, “Boy’s Reminiscences,” 337.

  28 stall placarded JEW’S MEAT: Ibid., 336.

  29 Girls went barefoot: “Journal of Joshua Brookes,” 579.

  30 “Our streets are filled with straggling fellows”: NYDA, 19 September 1799.

  31 found his Pearl Street shop broken into: Ibid., 17 September 1799.

  32 Flood and Tracey grocery shop was raided: NYG, 19 September 1799.

  33 thieves robbing him of fifty vests: NYMA, 3 October 1799.

  34 208 Greenwich: Kleiger, Trial of Levi Weeks, 1. Although court transcripts note that the boardinghouse was on Greenwich, Kleiger appears to be the first to specify the address, noting that there is a listing for Elias Ring at 208 Greenwich in the 1798 Longworth’s American Almanack. I note that the presumably adjoining address 209 Greenwich is also given by Ring in his waterwheel ads from 1799.

  The address would place them at or near the corner of Greenwich and Barclay Streets; that this was also the location of the boardinghouse, and not just Ring’s business, can be confirmed from the testimony of Margaret Miller in the trial transcript of Richard David Croucher (5). She testifies that the Ring boardinghouse was “almost by Rhinelander’s brew house.” Advertisements by Rhinelander from this period (for example, Albany Gazette, 23 January 1800) specify it as “at the corner of Barclay and Greenwich Streets.”

  35 Elias Ring wrote to his wife: Hardie, Impartial Account of the Trial 11.

  36 “Cassie, our neighbor”: Laight, Diaries, 27 September 1799.

  37 laborer … and a cart driver: NYDA, 4 October 1799.

  38 tenant died at a boardinghouse: NYCA, 7 October 1799.

  39 “In this pestilential period”: GNDA, 1 August 1799.

  40 Hosack confidently presented a sweating cure: Sherk, “David Hosack, M.D., and Rutgers,” 20.

  41 “draw off the noxious electrical fluid”: Young, Toadstool Millionaires, 25.

  42 “Having obtained from various experiments”: NYCA, 30 July 1799.

  43 “To pour buckets of cold water”: Ibid., 18 October 1799.

  44 “First frost”: Laight, Diaries, 18 October 1799.

  45 “General movement back”: Ibid., 26 October 1799.

  46 An abandoned flock of sheep: NYDA, 23 October 1799.

  47 two cannons were simply dropped: NYG, 26 October 1799.

  48 PEACHES, PLUMBS, GREEN GAGES: NYCA, 9 October 1799.

  49 English and geography: Ibid., 21 October 1799.

>   50 gouging dying families: Koeppel, Water for Gotham, 63.

  51 speculators were now buying up local supplies of wood: NYMA, 2 October 1799.

  52 “I should not be afraid to drink it full”: William Coleman, Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks, 32.

  53 their peculiar love of Halloween … in the graveyard: “Journal of Joshua Brookes,” 31 October 1801.

  3. THE YOUNG QUAKER

  1 “But a few days ago our city”: NYMA, 6 November 1799.

  2 “I therefore humbly hint”: Ibid.

  3 Tea-Water Men: Koeppel, Water for Gotham, 32.

  4 “They pretend their water is pure”: Ibid., 64.

  5 a plan to pipe Manhattan: Ibid., 39.

  6 “Had I been brought up a hatter”: Ibid., 36.

  7 calls for a solution had grown louder: Ibid., 59.

  8 “The health of a city”: Ibid., 65.

  9 received five proposal bids: Report of the Manhattan Company, 9.

  10 operating a mill upstate: GNDA, 19 February 1794.

  11 run an ad in Philadelphia and New York newspapers: e.g., Aurora General Advertiser (Philadelphia), 23 February 1798; and GNDA, 6 December 1799.

  12 “The Collect has been unjustly stigmatized”: Report of the Manhattan Company, 29.

  13 the pleasingly round sum: Ibid., 36.

  14 same rounds were the milk merchants: Morhouse, “Boy’s Reminiscences,” 343.

  15 stank of Long Island meadow garlic: Monaghan and Lowenthal, This Was New York, 22.

  16 off-putting about his sales manner: William Coleman, Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks, 82.

  17 accompany me to my brother’s: Ibid., 38.

  18 on the corner of Greenwich and Harrison: Longworth’s American Almanack (1799), 389.

  19 “Why don’t you ask me?”: William Coleman, Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks, 38.

  20 Levi still took pains to attend to her: Ibid., 21.

  21 “turtle feast”: Janvier, In Old New York, 219.