Danger Stalks Mrs. Wallace!
- Alisa Kline
- Dec 20, 2024
- 11 min read
Part 1
Buried in the Wallace Town History is a tale of crime and intrigue. Wallace himself is a bit player in this story, and famed abolitionist Nathanial Peabody Rogers makes an appearance. The lead is taken by Wallace’s mother, Mary Flint Wallace. First, some necessary background.
James Wallace married Mary Flint (these would be William Allen Wallace’s mother and father) in 1811. They promptly had three boys. John Flint, in 1812, James Burns in 1813, and William Allen in 1815. In 1817, the whole kit and caboodle of them moved to Canaan where a fourth son, Oscar, was born in 1818. Oscar was followed by Amelia, Sophia, Rodney (died in infancy) and Harriet.
James Wallace made pots and pearl ash. There’s a whole blog post coming on pearl ash. It’s what New Englanders did with all the ashes from all the forests they were burning down. In addition to his pearl ash business, James ran a store on Canaan Street. The Wallace home was also on Canaan Street, next from the Meeting House, across Roberts Road.
When James died suddenly in 1831, Mary was left with many small children and a lot of financial affairs to unwind. Her eldest son, John Flint had gone to sea at in 1831 and was gone four years. He eventually spent his life at sea. Her next eldest son, James Burns left Canaan upon his father’s death and became a clerk in a store in Concord. We frequently run into James Burns (elder brother) in this blog. He was a great writer and Wallace seems to have relied on his letters and diary in writing his History.
William Allen Wallace, although only 17, was already gone two years from his mother’s home by 1832. He became a printer’s apprentice in 1830 in Haverhill. Oscar was about 12 or 13 when his father died. I am keen on getting these details right, because the absence and presence of male protection plays a big role in the story that is to follow.
Women without male partners made easy marks for criminals, and Mrs. Wallace fell victim to one such ne’er do well, a powerful man named Isaac Dole.
Page 469
Isaac Dole, the chief character in this story, had been for several years a deputy sheriff. He lived on the mountain in Lebanon, and was in the practice of loaning money to needy persons. He had accumulated a fortune, all of which, except the farm he occupied, was in cash, which he loaned like a banker.
Deputy sheriff was no small office. The sheriff or his deputy were the ones who could carry you off to court or to jail. Sheriffs had the power of coercion, and Sheriff Dole seemed not shy about putting that power to use. It is an interesting combination to be a lender of money and a deputy sheriff. Debtors prison was a curse in those days. Imagine borrowing money from the man who could literally haul you to jail.
But most men were honest and borrowed only such money as they could pay back. Store owners, like James Wallace, Sr. had to purchase goods to sell, but likely didn’t have enough money for purchase until they had the profit from selling the merchandise they didn’t yet own. They had to buy at once and sell over time. Borrowing the money allowed for this. They borrowed all at once and paid back over time (or at least could accumulate the money over time).
Page 470
James Wallace had on more than one occasion borrowed money of Dole. These loans, the executrix had reason to believe, were all paid and the notes cancelled. The last one for $200 had been paid a short time before Mr. Wallace’s last illness, which was sudden and fatal, and the cancelled note was filed among his papers. The spring following his death she received notice from Dole, that he held a note against the estate for $200, and desired to know when it would suit her convenience to pay it.
James Wallace died on August 7, 1831. The “spring following his death” would have been 1832. I’m paying close attention to these dates because soon a Canaan lawyer will join the story. His role is a sordid one and Wallace is careful not to name him. But given those pesky dates, I think we can smoke out who it was.
She was a good deal surprised and annoyed, but having no suspicion of the dishonesty on the part of Dole, she invited Mrs. Martha Harris to ride to Lebanon with her in order to pay the note.
They started out and had ridden as far as William Campbell’s on Town Hill, when they met Dole on his way to visit her. They all stopped at Mr. Campbell’s; the note was produced, the money paid, and they returned home.
No suspicion of forgery was aroused that day, and had Mr. Dole on receiving the money, asked that he might retain the cancelled paper, she would have given it to him, and this story would never have been written.
This is a complete digression, but I keep trying to work out a plausible scenario in which Mrs. Wallace “happens” to run into the man she was on her way to see the very day he’s on his way to see her. I imagine that there was an exchange of correspondence naming the date. I wonder if it was common practice at the time for both parties to start out and meet in the middle when it came to business transactions. That way, no one was burdened with all the travel.
But back to our tale of high crime. The note James Wallace signed and his widow paid came under suspicion almost immediately. The paper it was on was weirdly shaped and the proportions were off. James Wallace had signed it, big and bold, but there was two inches of blank space below his name. This wouldn't have been suspicious except for the fact that the details of Wallace’s indebtedness (how much he owed, when he had borrowed it, etc.), were crammed into a small space above the signature. With two inches to spare on the paper below the signature, why had the author of the note so crowded his details? More people were invited to come and examine this suspicious note.
Page 470
While talking upon the subject next day, the Rev. Mr. Foster came in and asked that he might examine the note. It was handed to him, and almost immediately he looked up and exclaimed. “Mrs. Wallace, this paper is a forgery!” and he tapped the paper with considerable energy with his forefinger.
“It was cut off from the bottom of a bill of goods which your husband had receipted and here,” continued he, “are the lower parts of the long letters in the words, ‘received payment’, which could not be cut off without leaving the paper too small to write the note upon.”
Upon close examination, they were all satisfied that Mr. Foster was correct; and George Kimball, lawyer, was called in to advise upon the case.
Dole, it seems, had come into posession of a bill signed by James Wallace indicating that he had been paid for some items. Dole sliced off the top 3/4 of the bill of goods, the list of items sold, leaving him with a few clear inches in which to make up a note of indebtedness above the existing signature, making it look as though James Wallace had signed it.
The law operated differently at the time of these events than it does now. Today, if someone swindled you the way Mrs. Wallace was swindled, you would go to the police and expect that they would investigate and if the case merited, it would be moved through prosecution.
Most of the machinery for that sort of response didn’t exist in 1831. The law was almost a private affair and one that seemed often to run for the benefit of the lawyers themselves. If you felt you had been wronged, you engaged a lawyer. You paid the lawyer. Right there, the lawyer is making money. If you go to court, you have to pay the sheriff who served your warrant and also the magistrate who hears the case. Each of those men were paid by the lawyers, with charges passed along to their clients. Court officers and sheriffs were the agents of the state, sort of. But local lawyers paid their salaries. In the meanwhile, the counter party to the suit had to hire their own lawyer, with subsequent charges again for all the mechanics of the law. Wallace describes the process in his discussion of the relationship of two lawyers in Canaan, Elijah Blaisdel and Thomas Pettingill
Page 319
He was made a Mason in Mount Moriah Lodge in 1814, and he soon became upon all occasions the rival and antagonist of his brother Pettingill. In their temperaments, these two men were much alike, arbitrary and overbearing, impatient of restraint, not scrupulous of the rights and feelings of others, and in the innumerable suits which they promoted, were always pitted against each other. Their language to each other was far from
polite, and a stranger would suppose them to be bitterly hostile, but when the time arrived for making up bills of costs, they would come readily together to divide the spoils in great seeming friendliness.
Wallace gives us another peek into this world in a letter to George Kimball from Nathanial P. Rogers, famed abolitionist and close friend of Kimball. In this letter, he is advising lawyer Kimball on how not to go broke. Something Kimball managed to do on a regular basis.
Page 321
Pay your sheriff often, and make your magistrate work cheap, pay him but part entry fee. Make out all your ex’ons yourself, and let him sign them, and pay him nothing for signing blanks.
As soon as Mrs. Wallace realized she had been swindled, she knew she needed legal help, so she called friend and lawyer George Kimball who began proceedings against Isaac Dole.
Page 471
The result was, that that same day Jonas Smith of Canaan arrested Dole in his own house upon the charge of forgery, and at the same time attached the real estate of Dole, upon a civil suit for the recovery of the money paid.
Damn! How’s that for some lawyering. The deputy sheriff arrested in his own home a day later.
But, of course, Isaac Dole wasn’t going to just roll over. He went in search of his own lawyering and found someone as unscrupulous as himself. This is how Wallace describes the encounter between Isaac Dole and the unnamed lawyer.
Page 471
There was a young lawyer in Canaan, who never refused a fee and who made a rule of his practice to look well after the interest of his clients — a man who, through long years of successful practice, was always true to his clients.
Dole came to him and stated the trouble that had come upon him, and that if he could not make some arrangement with the widow he would be ruined.
Wallace completely makes up the following dialogue. He must have. He was nowhere near Canaan when it took place and I’m pretty sure the two men in question took care not to be overheard. Given that, I think it’s okay to be amused by the Snidley Whiplash-esque nature of it. Our first speaker is Dole:
“Now,” said he, “put your wits to work and the fee shall be ample.”
The lawyer listened patiently to the story and then waited a moment before speaking. “Mr. Dole, as your counsel, I must ask you to be very candid with me, and tell me in one word, if the charge of forgery be true? If I know the exact truth, it will enable me to change the ground of defence with more confidence.”
Dole told him to go to work as if the charge was true.
“Indeed,” said the lawyer. “I suspected as much! and you have got the widow’s money in your pocket now! and the question is,” continued the lawyer, “how to keep it there!”
“Exactly,” said Dole, “I see you are good on a trail.”
“Now,” continued the lawyer, “Mrs. Wallace has got that fatal paper. If we could get it into our possession, we would doubtless make terms with her; suppose we go down and call upon her, perhaps we can persuade her to let us examine it.”
Oh yeah. That’s great. Let the sheriff and creepy lawyer pay the widow Wallace a visit. And who was this creepy lawyer? I’m pretty sure I know.
There weren’t very many lawyers in Canaan in 1832. Wallace spends a good deal of time detailing each of their careers in his chapter on lawyers. In 1832, there were four lawyers working on the Street. Only one of them could be called young. William P. Weeks! Readers of this blog will have met him just two weeks ago. I did not realize when writing about him that he played a role in this story. I was convinced when I first started that the lawyer in question would turn out to be Elijah Blaisdell. But he wasn’t young. And something about that “never refused a fee” crack struck a familiar note.
This is how Wallace described William Weeks in his chapter on Lawyers:
Page 330
Mr. Weeks, in the earlier years of his practice, was not always scrupulous of the means he used against his adversaries, and was unmerciful to debtors. Like many other young lawyers, his first rule of practice, was fees, costs and charges, and his second rule was to collect them.
Not always scrupulous! We now have this man bearing down on Wallace’s widowed mother intending to strong-arm her into giving up the forged note. This should be beyond “not always scrupulous,” but those were different times and who am I to judge. It wasn’t my mother he intended to harm.
Enter Oscar Wallace. Aged 13. In the next bit, there will be reference to Mrs. Wallace's little boy. Only Oscar, of the sons, remained at home, so we can assume he was the one dispatched to arrange rescue. Oscar kept a diary (something of a habit among the Wallaces) and the way Wallace paints this scene sounds much less made up than his earlier effort. I imagine he got information about the rest of this encounter from his younger brother either in a letter or diary or even more likely, from frequent retelling within the family.
Page 471
They started out down the street, and called upon the widow, whom they found alone. Meantime she had seen them approaching, and had sent her little boy, anticipating a visit, to invite Lawyer Kimball to the interview. She greeted her visitors politely, but with a strong feeling of antagonism.
The lawyer stated the object of their call, and with great suavity, asked her to allow him to look at the paper which she alleged to be a forgery.
She replied to him very quickly: “Do you think, sir, that it would be safe or prudent for me to place that paper in the hands of two such disinterested and honorable men as you and Mr. Dole? Even if I were disposed to gratify you, which I am not, you ought to know that when the complaint was made on that piece of paper, it passed out of my possession.”
They then changed their plans. Mr. Dole suggested he could make it an object for her to stop the suit, as there was some uncertainty in the result of it. He would refund the money with interest and give her a hundred dollars as a bonus.
She still declined their offers with some asperity of tone. Then Mr. Dole seeing that smiles and offers of bonus had failed, changed his batteries and made a demand for her dead husband’s books and papers, intimating if she did not give them up some unpleasant things might happen.
She was a resolute, brave woman, and she was alone, but she began to feel apprehension lest these two strong men, the fate of one of whom lay in her hands, might not possess themselves of those papers, which were in the desk in that same room, and among them the original note, cancelled, which was to be put in evidence whenever the case came to trial.
And, in true Perils of Pauline style, here we leave our tale until next week.
Comments