Boston Corbett

[L Verge]

(01-10-2016 08:29 AM)Gene C Wrote:  I am so glad you find interesting parallels.

Try this idea, maybe Corbett's mind wasn't working rationally, and hadn't for many years

You may find this food for thought, a quote from an article found on the internet.
"Corbett was arrested, declared insane, and committed to the state hospital in Topeka. In May 1888, while taking a walk on the grounds with other patients, Corbett saw a horse hitched near the entrance and used it to make his escape. He rode south to Neodesha, stayed with a friend for a couple days, then said he was leaving for Mexico.

A few years later a man claiming to be Corbett surfaced, trying to collect his pension. He was found to be an impostor. No further official record of Corbett exists."

Unlike many of your posts, here is my source
https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/thomas-p...bett/15134

Quote: Why did Corbett the 'Jesus clone with hair and renewed peaceful Christianity', what reason did Boston Corbett have to sign up and zealously wish to go South and shoot those folks living there? If Corbett was true to himself or Christianity he now professed, he would certainly never have done that. While John Brown wanted to end slavery, Boston Corbett did not say any such thing. The invigorated new christian, Corbett, did not enlist because he wanted to end slavery.

This isn't the place for this type of discussion, but you have an unhealthy lack of knowledge regarding the Bible and what it has to say about Christianity, and the relationship between God and man.

Gene, I suspect that the Bible is a foreign language to maharba, who has already espoused atheism to us on this forum. Also, I question why he singles out Corbett as going against God's will (instead of with it) when we all should realize that the vast majority of those who fought on both sides of the Civil War were Christians who believed their cause was the just one.

I have also been told by both James O. Hall and Michael Kauffman that, in their many years of research, they never found that the troops were ordered to take Booth alive. Law enforcement people have also told me that that is a rather dumb order because it places the police/soldiers/whoever in grave danger - they will hold their fire to protect the criminal while he/she is busy aiming at and shooting them!

[Craig Hipkins]

Here is an article published in the Marion Daily Star on 18 September 1879. It is a good example of some writer publishing erroneous information as fact. Where the information came from cannot be ascertained but it probably came from the anonymous authors imagination.

Boston Corbett who shot John Wilkes Booth, is now a Nevada miner, Here is his record up to date: 1865, a soldier; 1866, a Lynn shoemaker; 1867, bookbinder and newsdealer in Boston; 1868, at work in Albany; 1869, a Utica printer; 1870, a salt workman in Syracuse; 1871, an Erie canal boatman; 1872, a laborer in buffalo; 1873, grocer clerk in Pittsburgh; 1874-75 a hatter in Cleveland; 1876 drayman in Chicago; 1877, book peddler in Omaha; 1878, a miner in Nevada.

[maharba]

If Corbett was true to himself or Christianity he now professed, he would certainly never have done that. While John Brown wanted to end slavery, Boston Corbett did not say any such thing. >

Gene
This isn't the place for this type of discussion, but you have an unhealthy lack of knowledge regarding the Bible and what it has to say about Christianity, and the relationship between God and man.>

LVerge
Gene, I suspect that the Bible is a foreign language to maharba, who has already espoused atheism to us on this forum. Also, I question why he singles out Corbett as going against God's will>

Thanks Gene, LVerge for relevant comments. But returning to Boston Corbett and his maleable religion which allowed him to lie to and about God (directing such and such killing, mayhem). Corbett unlike John Brown was not 'commissioned by God to end slavery', he just enlisted to join the Federal invasion, and a good chance to shoot Southern folk. When he was caught by Mosby's small partisan force, Mosby allowed the odd little fellow to empty his rifle, then instead of shooting or hanging Corbett (as Corbett surely WOULD have done to him, if circumstances reversed), Mosby captured little Boston without backshooting or insane abuse. So thanks to Mosby, Boston Corbett had the chance to return the act of sane Christian mercy, but instead Corbett lurked in the shadows and shot in the back the man in the barn, the man on crutches. Later, bitterly complained about not getting enough blood money for this murder.

Gene
A few years later a man claiming to be Corbett surfaced, trying to collect his pension. He was found to be an impostor.

Yes, that's interesting stuff, Gene. I've traced out their genealogy, and will post the connection, at a later date. Note that that 'Boston Corbett' lived for a time in and around Enid, Indian Territory where David George died in 1903. And also, the 'pension fraud' has interest that I'll come back to, when the dust clears a bit.

In regard to Lincoln experts that there was no order to take Booth alive. Booth or Boyd had already sent out the other man in the barn, and stood alone against 20 men and asked for a fight, face on. Instead the barn was set on fire, and Boyd/Booth was backshot by a coward, as he stood leaning on crutches. Maybe, if the Federals had had 200 men "it might have safe" to try and bring him back alive?

And I want to return again to Corbett's claim of shooting Booth exactly behind the left ear "as God directed him to do". This would be the first description of the supposed "capture of John Wilkes Booth", the eye witness is either lying or another man has been shot. Why is it so hard to interest 'the Lincoln experts' in investigating the huge discrepancy: Corbett swears (in God's holy name, no less) that he shot Booth just behind the left ear. But the man in the barn had NO such injury at all?

[maharba]

An amusing laundry list attributed there to Corbett, I wonder if even one
of those did apply to Boston Corbett. It almost looks like the
reporter/editor had something he was referring from --maybe old city directories? An old Concordia clipping has some of Boston Corbett's efforts at poetry and I think may actually be his work. Let me ask you this question, Craig, about the idea of him dying in the Great Hinckley
(Minnesota) Fire of 1894. Do you think that if that were Boston Corbett, he would have reverted to his PRE-BAPTISM name change and back to Thomas Corbett? It was a signal event to Corbett when he got religion, and I can not see him, for any reason, disposing of his name Boston Corbett. Which makes me further dubious that Corbett was the man (likely) dying there in the Great Fire in 1894.

[Craig Hipkins]

Maharba, It is a possibility that the "Thomas Corbett" that burned to death in the Hinckley MN fire in 1894 is Boston Corbett, but I find this to be highly unlikely. The Rev. William Wilkinson published a memorial of the fire shortly after the event and listed a Thomas Corbett as one of the victims. There are a couple of reasons that I believe it is not Boston Corbett that perished in the flames at Hinckley. First, Wilkinson lists Thomas Corbett as being 57 years of age which would have put his birth year at around 1837. Boston Corbett, according to many sources was born in England around 1832. This is a discrepancy of 5 years. A second reason that I believe it was not him was that "Thomas Corbett" was a fairly popular name. According to the 1880 census there were over 100 Thomas Corbett's living in the United States. Finally, Corbett knew that he was a fugitive of sorts. If he was looking for anonymity in the woods around Hinckley why would he have used the name Corbett at all? Why not change it to "Smith" or "Jones?" I know that these reasons do not prove anything, but they lead me to believe that Boston Corbett and the Hinckley Corbett are two different people. That is my gut feeling at the present time, unless any new evidence comes to light.

I wrote an article a few years back (Unpublished) that lists the possible fate of Boston Corbett. I for one would like to know!

[maharba]

That's close research and good logic. I was going to speculate further and say that if Boston Corbett reverted back to Thomas Corbett, it might be because he had again become a drunk --letting both his (oddball brand of) religion fall away and his sober habits. But that doesn't likely to me, that would have happened. Whether from mercury, tertiary syphillis, war trauma, being hounded by letter-writing-hucksters, or whatever reason, Boston Corbett was nuts and only getting nuttier. But never tending toward being less religious, only more so. I made a close search of Corbett's in and
around Pine county MN, before and after the 1894 Fire, but don't see where I put my records. Nothing there, really, was promising towards finding Boston Corbett. He was last seen at or going to a KS train station, with the comment of 'going on to Mexico". That was June 1, 1888 in Kansas. He had recovered some of himself physically I think in the insane asylum in Topeka, was able to steal a pony and ride well and fast to escape. Yet, his 1880 invalid pension application had made out like he was very broke down and not far from death. So, there at the first of June in Kansas, he surely was not going to die of exposure or hypothermia anytime soon.
I think the reason he came out to there in Kansas was from corresponding with other 'invalid' soldiers who advised him how to get a (fake) pension, whom to talk to, maybe pay the man a dollar or two extra for his advice. Corbett was networking with others and when he stole the pony, he knew just where to go to. Another man he'd been in the army with. Most sources say Richard Thatcher, but I believe it was instead Irwin DeFord. After just a couple days (of listening to Corbett rant and routine), he made it clear to Corbett: goodbye but don't ever come back here. My guess is that Corbett traveled to the home(s) of others he had known in the service.
Perhaps listed on Pensioner lists. The 1883 pensioners roll for Cloud county, KS looks exceptionally long, to me. We know the 1890 census was burned up. As you say, if he was really trying to hide, it would be under another name. So, the 1900 census might show a white man, age 68, born england, perhaps a preacher, maybe a hatter, widowed, perhaps (still) listed as war pension --though not drawing it any longer. If he still was alive in 1900, he might have been staying with or near another pensioner. For instance, if I was living in Nebraska and had him "my old comrade in arms" on my place, I'd have him a good quarter mile off in a shed and take away his guns, as a condition of staying there.

[maharba]

A few years after Boston Corbett began drawing an 'invalid pension', attorney Daniel L. Brown went on trial in federal court for receiving fraudulent pensions. Old newspaper clippings drop off, after showing that Brown was set for trial. Within a couple more years, Daniel Brown was elected Probate
Judge in Cloud County KS. It would be interesting if there had been a trial, and depositions taken and did the government consider Corbett's and several other submitted pensions to be fraudulent. Could it be that Corbett had first corresponded and learned there was plenty of homestead acreage there, and
easy access to secure an invalid pension? Later, after Judge Brown became fed up with Corbett's antics, and as a Probate Judge, Daniel Brown was apparently the man who could and likely might certify Boston Corbett as insane, if Corbett remained in Cloud county. In the days before stealing the Superintendent's son's pony and running off from the Insane Asylum, Boston Corbett had tried to escape apparently assaulting a guard with a knife. He also had been making loud threats to kill: the Governor of Kansas, the warden, various officials and including Probate Judges. The man who had put Boston Corbett away had been Charles Curtis, a future US Vice President, and himself a very historic, colorful character.
I wonder if, too, Corbett did not conclude that he had painted himself into a corner with a series of actions? By filing for that absurdly small pension and overinflating his supposed disability,
Corbett opened the door and brought the government into a close scrutiny of his physical and mental condition. And which finally landed Corbett, a captive, into an insane asylum.