Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — Career of an Accomplished and Notorious Counterfeiter. [ARTICLE]

Career of an Accomplished and Notorious Counterfeiter.

1 ■ J ' ■ The Chicago Tima gives the following account of the career and arrest of the notorious counterfeiter, Benjamin Boyd, recently tried and convicted before the United States District Court in Chicago. Mrs. Boyd was acquitted, the Court deciding that there was not evidence enough to warrant a conviction in her case: Boyd, as a member of Trout’s organization, was much sought after, though in vain, by the ferrets of the Government until Chief Washbume took his case in hand. His capture on the 21st of October last added the cap-sheaf to the stock of “crooks” that officer had been harvesting during the summer. He was taken with the mire of crime upon his hands, and the case against him is now so clear that the only element of doubt in it relates to the length of hia sentence. Considerable wonderment is expressed that he should stand trial at all ; but the man would not be the man he is to give up hlq liberty without the last struggle he could make to save it. Boyd is probably one of the most accomplished engravers on steel and copper that ever prostituted artistic talents to vile ends. He was the maker ot those splendid counterfeits on the flve-dollat notes of the Traders’ National Bank, of this city, and the National Banks of Peoria, Canton, Paxton and Aurora that circulated so widely last year and the year preceding it. These bills were so well executed that even the officers of the hanks themselves were taken in by them. So delicate and close an imitation was it that the Secretary of the Treasury ordered the iteue to be called, in ; and when this was done the department at Washington actually; received $20,000 of them as genuine notes, and lost that amount by the transaction. In 1871 Boyd engraved a counterfeit SSO Treasury plate, from which he printed $283,000 worth of notes that were successfully* set afloat Of this

witwirtiw » MwsaeWr Nelson liriggs got $lj(U),OOO, and the balance was divided between Lew Blate and Dr. Parker, these three being his partners in the enterprise As an Indies tion of his skill it may be stated that the printer they had In their employ being seized with a severe illness about the time the plates were finished, Boyd printed the bills himself. The copy was almost exact, and the whole issue waa gotten rid of Long befoje the fraud was suspected. He never meddled with the utterance of any of his work. Buried in the seclusion of some little river town, in an out-of-the-way house where he would take his wife to bear him company and assist in the work, he delved away at the finer mechanical parts of the trade, and avoided that point in the business which came in contact with the public. Tip and down the river, from New Orleans to Dubuque, the members of this band were Scattered, each doing his part in as unassuming and unobtrusive a style as possible. Boyd was the heart of it, and with him removed its life is gone. He lived a long time at Nauvoo; it was there that he the SSO masterpiece above alluded to. In October of last year Patrick D. Tyrell, chief of the secret force in this district, accompanied bv the elder Brooks and John R. Macdonald, went to Lyons, lowa, with the purpose of taking Boyd into custody. Boyd was living in a rented house at Le Claire, lowa, under the assumed name of Wilson. He had with him an assistant named Nat Kinsley, a man of mark and some celebrity. The detectives had tracked him there, and knew that he was at work on some fresh scheme of fraud. They went to the house on the morning of the 21st, at about nine o’clock. Tyrell and Brooks knew from the peculiar arrangement of the shades in an upper window that the engravers were at work.

They walked up the road (the house was isolated and could not be approached by anyone unseen of those within), and, as they neared the dwelling, saw Kinsley leave it and run away. They wasted no time in pursuit of him, but, leaving Macdonald a little in the rear to watch the front and sides of the house, Tyrell and Brooks went to the back door, which Tyrell entered. The first person he saw inside was Almarinda Boyd, who was standing in the dining-room. She demandeato know his business, and when he told her who he was promptly seized him by the coat-collar and began to make an outcry. Tyrell handed her over to Brooks, who returned her to the diningroom and remained with her until Macdonald had been called in and instructed to hold her until they should come downstairs. Boyd, with his coat off, had appeared at the head of the Stairs in considerable trepidation, and to him Tyrell at once addressed himself. Boyd was taken into a front room and hanci cuffed. He was quite disturbed, but on the whole took things quietly, and sat still while the house was searched. Mrs. Boyd, meanwhile, was trying to corrupt Macdonald. There was good money in the house, and she wanted it. She asked him who he

was, where he lived, and what he was going" to do, all of which questions he answered; and then she him to let her go and get the money. On his refusal, she offered him a bribe of SI,OOO, and promised never to tell; but the nnderling was true to his duty, and stuck to her closer than a pitch plaster to a pine plank until Tyrell called him to where they were ransacking the furniture. In the bedroom where they were now all assembled was a very dirty bed and a dry-goods box; this latter article being covered with a spread and having upon it a washbowl and pitcher. Tyrell searched the bed, and, failingto find anything more unusual than an inordinate population in it, turned to the box and broke it open. Inside it was found a roll of good bills amounting to $7,800. - While he was tearing the boards apart one of them split, revealing a niCeiy-cut mortise “broadway” of it, from which mortise dropped an elegantly engraved plate of the center of a twenty-dollar greenback. Then the rest of the house was gone through. In the room where the shades were so peculiarly arranged were found a work-bench and a complete set of engraving tools, together with a lot of plates, some completed, and others in process. Altogether there were some twenty-five plates captured, one set of them being Intended to copy a SIOO Treasury note, another for a twenty-dollar treasury note, another for a flve-dollar, and two sets each for Stantou and Dexter head flity-cent scrip. The flve-dollar plates were intended for bank currency; there were five of them, all necessary to the production of one note, but one of them was susceptible of changes that would suit any National Bank in the country. There were also found two other boxes, both containing contraband apparatus, and one of which Mrs. Boyd endeavored to save by covering it over with a piece of carpet and shoving it aside with her foot. The pair were brought to Chicago, and lodged for the time being in the Brevoort Souse. While there they admitted to lief Washburn, and to both Brooks and Tyrell, the fact of their business, and held several chats with those officers on matters connected with that topic and their own particular affairs.