The Roadmaster's Gold Watch and the Mail Robber Who Came Back for More
Samuel Henry of the N.P.R.R. woke to find his watch gone and assumed it was a joke. A Tacoma marshal followed a hunch to a young man fresh out of the penitentiary — who confessed, sold the watch on Pacific Avenue, and then disappeared.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
On Sunday last, while Samuel Henry, roadmaster of this branch of the N. P. R. R., was asleep in his room, he was robbed of a valuable gold watch. Upon awakening and finding out his loss he supposed that some of the boys had been playing a joke on him and thought no more about it for the time. He went to Kalama on Monday and did not return until Tuesday, when, as the watch did not turn up, he informed the City Marshal, E. O. Fulmer, that he had been robbed of his watch.
The Marshal immediately set to work to find a clue to the thief, and having his suspicions aroused by the actions of a young man named Edward Abbott, who has lately undergone a sentence of one year's imprisonment in the penitentiary for robbing the mails between this place and Seattle, he hunted the young man up and accused him of stealing Mr. Henry's watch. Abbott denied any knowledge of the affair, but upon being pressed he confessed to having stolen it, and sold it to Mr. Davis, the jeweler, on Pacific avenue, for $17. The watch was recovered and restored to its owner, upon Abbott's promising to pay the money he had received for it, but it is understood the young gentleman has left for parts unknown.
Great credit is due to the Marshal for his untiring efforts in ferreting out the offender, as not the slightest clue was to be had to work upon. — Tacoma Ledger.
“The watch was recovered and restored to its owner, upon Abbott's promising to pay the money he had received for it, but it is understood the young gentleman has left for parts unknown.”
Tacoma in 1883 was the western terminus of the Northern Pacific and the railroad town that Seattle was still trying to overtake, which is why a roadmaster's stolen watch rated a paragraph in a Seattle paper. It is a small story of the kind the age produced constantly: a young man out of the penitentiary for robbing the mails between Tacoma and Seattle, back at the same trade within the year, and gone again before anyone could collect. Marshal Fulmer never got his arrest — only the watch.
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