Lou’s View: THE CRIMES OF LEWIS AND CONLEY
By Lou Bernard
There’s something about certain notorious criminals that ages well. Thieves and various bad guys look fascinating to us when we’re viewing them in the past, in spite of the fact that nobody was exactly rooting for them at the time. Bonnie and Clyde. Jesse James. Billy the Kid. And, locally, we had our own pair of devious crooks, Lewis and Conley.
David “The Robber” Lewis was born on March 4, 1790. John Michael Conley was an Irish immigrant. The two of them teamed up for a long-lasting crime spree in this area before Clinton County even existed.
In the early 1800s, Lewis and Conley committed a variety of illegal acts in the area. The word appropriately used by John Blair Linn, historian, was “Infested”. Linn wrote,”Lewis and Conley were two notorious desperate characters who infested this region of country at an early day. Their deeds of daring lawlessness were numerous.”
The two were such a problem that the local governments offered a reward for them, dead or alive—Lewis and Conley were worth six hundred dollars to whoever stopped them. This is about sixteen billion dollars by today’s standards.
At the time, Clinton County hadn’t been founded yet. The area was partially Centre and partially Lycoming, and the dividing line ran through Flemington. The county border was one of the favorite target areas for these two, and they often stuck close to Bald Eagle Creek.
In one incident in the summer of 1820, Lewis and Conley robbed a peddler along the creek and then set up camp on top of the hill, just above Great Island Cemetery. This would be somewhere around where Burger King now stands—That’s right, the next time you enjoy a Whopper and some onion rings, you’re within about fifty yards of where a desperado camped out.
The problem was that they had too much loot. You might not exactly view this as much of an issue, but Robber Lewis did. They didn’t want to carry all the cash they had, so they built a fire and began to burn what they couldn’t easily carry. This created some smoke, which was easily seen by the people who lived down below, in the area where Lock Haven would later be founded.
The word had previously gone out that there were some notorious criminals in the neighborhood. News of the reward probably didn’t hurt, either. So the locals ran to the top of the hill and chased Lewis and Conley, who just barely escaped, and ran upriver to the Sinnemahoning.
Sometime soon after, they were captured and shot by a local posse. Conley was gut-shot, and died before help could be arranged. (Probably nobody was trying all that hard.) His body was buried just outside Great Island Cemetery, very near his final hideout. Some time later, according to historian D.S. Maynard, his body was exhumed, and his skull was taken to be used as a classroom teaching aid. The rest of him was reburied. When Great Island Cemetery was moved in 1918, his body was one of the ones that was unfound and left behind, so sorry if you’re reading this and you happen to live in that neighborhood.
Robber Lewis is buried in Milesburg Cemetery. He was shot in the arm, refused treatment, and was taken to jail in Bellefonte. He died there on July 2, 1820, while telling people that he could see where he’d hidden some loot from the window of his cell. People have looked for it, but it’s never turned up, and it’s pretty likely that he was just messing with everyone on his way out. Robber Lewis was like that.
