Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1887 — BILLY KISSANE. [ARTICLE]

BILLY KISSANE.

Interesting Incidents in the Life of a Somewhat Remarkable Man. His Adventures in Cincinnati, New York, Nicaragua, and California. * i. -■ . It is now about sixty-two years since “Billy" Kissane was born to increase the distress of a poor Irish family. Exactly how or when he crossed the Atlantic has not yet been made public, but 'somewhere in the ’3(;s ho turned up jn Canada. He did not stay there lone, for within the next decade l.e made his appeasance in Cincinnati, It was at the latter place that “Bidy” Kissane engaged in the plot to bum the steamer Maltha Washington and collect an enormous insurance upon a fictitious cargo of lard and other freight shipped in barrels as brandy. The steamer, bound from Cincinnati to. New Orleans, was burned near Helena, Ark., on the night of January 14, 1552. There weie eighteen lives lost, but enough of the cargo was throwp overboard and saved to expose the plot that had caused such a horrible loss of life, and Kissane and Hubbard, the clerk of the boat, were arrested and tried in Ohio for the murder. The Ohio courts declined to assume jurisdicricn over a crime committed in Arkansas, and Kissane was carried -to Helena, There the prosecution fell through for want of funds after several attempts had been made to kill Sidney C. Burton, the principal witness against the prisoners. Kissane was next heard of in New York, where in August, 1854, he was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to Sing Sing for forgeries on the Chemical Bank of that city. Between his escape fiom the clutches of the law in Helena and falling into them a: am in New York he must have visited Cleveland, Ohio, where thirty-four years ago he married a lady, who is' still living. The couple lived together five months, when he left her, and after his departure plates of $1 and $5 bank notes were all that she could find among his effects to remember him by. The deserted wife procured a divorce and secured SI,OOO ali'mony, which she may collect now if Rogers proves to be her long-lost husband. A daughter of Kissane still lives in Cleveland. She has never seen her father, but if the wealthy Californian should be he Bhe will be an heiress in spite of all his wanderings and his wire and children in the Sonoma valley. Before the expiration of his sentence Kissane was pardoned out of Sing Sing upon condition that he would testify in the insurance cases growing out of the burning of the Martha Washington. He made a written confession of his share in that horror, but upon his release he violated his promise to the insurance companies and fled to Nicaragua, where under an assumed name it was reported he was shot. The efforts of Burton to bring the Kissane gang to justice provoked its deadly hatred. He was said to have spent $50,000 and traveled 150,000 miles in nis task of hfinting down the Kissane conspirators, but according to the report they finally got the best of him by poison. Every movement of Burton in the United States and Canada was dogged by the emissaries of Kissane until in the fall of 1835 they succeeded in smuggling a subtle poison into his loodthat ate away one of his lungs, so that he died in terrible agony in December of that year. Thirty-two years ago Billy Kissane disappeared from view'. Whether he had gone to Brazil or to Nicaragua or the north pole no one appeared to know. The insurance companies could not find him; MS' associates did not want to find him. The less known about his whereabouts the better it was for them. They covered his disappearance completely. It was in the year 1855-that the black sombrero of the “famous filibuster chief,” the “gray-eyed man of destiny,” Walker, led his troop of dark-browed, bearded adventurers upon his wonderful, daring, and cruel ride through Nicaragua. With Walker in that baud rode one Col. W. K. Rogers. He was one of the bravest. Of him D. B. Wolf, a well-known Californian, says: “I have known him intimately for thirty-one years. We were together with Walker in Nicaragua, and he stood like a lion where bullets flew thickest. He became the Minister of the Inferior under Walker, and was one of the men chosen by our chief to accompany him on the United States vessel when the fates went against the .United States.” Thirty years ago “Col.” Rogers parted ! company with his chief, “ whose heart was blacic and whose hands were red,” at Panama, and sailed for California, where he arivecl in and where he began a new life. According to his friend Wolf, hq had not a cent when he landed. But it is scarcely to be credited that “Col.” Rogers, who subsequently developed such financial shrewdness, wasted all his opportunities as Walker’s minister of haciendas, and left Nicaragua empty-handed. At all even s; he began his career on the Pacific slope as a merchant in Sacramento, subsequently turned his attention to the Comstock mines, and now lives in prosperous ease on a rich Sonoma ranch. About twenty years ago “Col.” Rogers married a beautiful young lady, tweuty years his junior, who is tne 6ister-in-law of Lloyd Tevis, once a partner of Ilaggin, the millionaire horse-breeder. He is also a halfbrother of Reuben Lloyd, one of the most prominent lawyers in San Francisco. All these facts and their attendant inferences have come to light through what appeared to be au innocent motion of a San Francisco lawyer before Recorder Smyth in New York to have a nolle proseqni entered on the indictment against William Kissane for forging a check for $12,060 upon ihe Chemical Bank in 1854. There are features about the proceedings thnt make it appear not at all incredible that “Colonel” Rogers is none other than“Bi:ly” Kissane, nndttiat he wished to have the old cloud removed from his life before venturing to join the colony of California millionaires iu New York. If so. he is probably now sorry that he was not content to die honored and unsuspected amid the beautiful surroundings of his Sonoma home.