Village of Onarga

Timothy Webster
His Body Lies Unappreciated in Onarga, IL Cemetery
by Patricia Dissmeyer Goff

A group of Onarga, Illinois citizens erected a monument to Timothy Webster at his gravesite on Memorial Day, 2000.

Timothy Webster has been recognized as Allan Pinkerton's most famous active agent in the Civil War.

Timothy Webster was born on March 12, 1822 in Newhaven, Sussex County, England. He immigrated to America in
August 1830 with his parents and settled in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1853 he was hired to guard the Crystal Palace
Exposition in New York City. He performed skillfully and around 1854 was noticed by a friend of AllanPinkerton's who
recommended him for detective work. Webster went to work for Pinkerton and quickly became their best agent.

Timothy had married Charlotte Sprowles on October 23, 1841 in Princeton, New Jersey. They had four children, two
of whom died young. Their son, Timothy Jr., born in 1843, joined the Union Army from Onarga, Illinois on July 30,
1862.

He was wounded in the Battle of Brices Crossroads near Ripley, Mississippi on June 11, 1864, and was taken to a
confederate prison in Mobile, Alabama where his leg was amputated. He subsequently died there on July 4, 1864.
His bodywas transported north to Onarga, Illinois and buried in the Onarga Cemetery next to his grandfather,
Timothy Webster Sr., who had died in Onarga in 1860.

At the beginning of the Civil War General George McClellan asked Pinkerton to act as Consultant regarding security
matters, which he readily agreed to.

Timothy Webster joined him in this effort and became one of the first Union spies. Webster worked mainly out of the
Chicago office and his family was residing in New York. Pinkerton suggested that Webster move his family closer and
suggested Onarga, Illinois, located south of Chicago on the Illinois Central Railroad. Pinkerton was familiar with the
area and had said that he would like to have a farm and house there someday-an ambition that was carried out later.

Charlotte and the children moved from New York to Onarga around 1858. Webster was sent to pose as a Southern
gentleman in the Baltimore area and managed to become a member of a rebel group in order to report on their plans
and activities. In February of 1861 president-elect Lincoln was to travel from Harrisburg through Baltimore and on to
Washington for his inauguration. While Webster was investigating rumors that secessionists were planning to blow
up the steamers that ferried trains across the Susquehanna River, he uncovered a plan to assassinate Lincoln as he
changed trains in Baltimore. Pinkerton and a female agent, Kate Warne, changed the route and time of Lincoln's trip
to Washington.
They accompanied him on this trip and Lincoln arrived safely in the Capital for his first inauguration.

In 1862, Webster was continuing to gather information on the Confederacy in Richmond when he was stricken with
inflammatory rheumatism which was a result of several previous crossings of the Potomac River in frigid weather.

Because Webster was too ill to send reports back to Pinkerton, he sent two of his agents-Lewis and Scully-to locate
him. The two men were recognized as being
Pinkerton spies, were captured by the Confederacy and eventually revealed secret information incriminating Timothy
Webster. Confederate officers had trusted Webster many times with valuable documents and information and the
Confederacy was extremely embarrassed by Webster's betrayal. While Lewis and Scully were eventually released,
Webster was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death by hanging.

When Pinkerton heard the news of the sentence, he contacted Senators and Congressmen, probably including
Stanton, who sent a message to the Confederacy threatening that if Webster was put to death, the Union would
reciprocate by hanging a Confederate spy. Previously, Union policy had been to keep spies in jail and eventually
exchange them for Union prisoners.

The Confederacy ignored the threat and on April 29, 1862, Timothy Webster climbed the gallows in Richmond,
Virginia. The noose was put around his neck and a black hood was fitted over his face. The trap was sprung but the
knot slipped and Webster fell to the ground. After being helped back up the steps and re-fitted with the noose he
said, "I suffer a double death!" The noose held the
second time, and Webster died within minutes.

Timothy was buried hastily in Richmond. In 1871, at the pleadings of his widow, Charlotte, and to fulfill a promise he
made to himself upon hearing of Timothy's death, Pinkerton sent George Bangs and Thomas G. Robinson
(Timothy's son-in-law) to Richmond to locate his body and bring it North for proper burial in "Northern soil."

Possibly with the help of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Southern-born Union sympathizer, they located Timothy's body, and
transported him to his final resting place in Onarga, Illinois. He was buried next to his father, Timothy Webster Sr.,
and his son, Timothy Webster Jr.

Timothy's widow, Charlotte, was living with her daughter and son-in-law, Sarah and Thomas Robinson in Onarga. In
September of 1874, this family moved to California where Charlotte received a pension and lived with her daughter
until she died on December 1, 1907. She is buried in the Old City Cemetery in Sacramento. Sarah Webster
Robinson is buried in the Masonic Cemetery on
Riverside Boulevard in Sacramento. Sarah's children never married, therefore there are no descendants of Timothy
Webster, only descendants of siblings.

A Career Switch That Changed History
by Patricia Dissmeyer Goff

From Old Fox River, an Historical Publication for the Fox River, Illinois Area
Vol. II, Issue 1, 1994

When a red-headed Scottish immigrant living in Dundee left the barrel-making business to pursue a more interesting
career, the move shifted the course of history. The man was Allan Pinkerton and his new career spawned the then
little-known field of detection.

When Pinkerton launched his row boat on the Fox River one summer day in 1847, he also inadvertantly launched
America's first "private eye" business.

Allan Pinkerton was born August 25, 1819 in Gorbals, Glasgow, Scotland. He became an apprentice at a cooper
shop at the age of 12, where he learned the art of barrelmaking. His father died when he was 14. Pinkerton and his
mother and brothers lived in poverty for years afterward.

Discontent with not being able to vote because he didn't own property, Pinkerton joined the Chartist Labor movement
which was working to get the voting laws changed. The Chartists also wanted to improve child laborers' sweat shop
conditions. A price was placed on Allan Pinkerton's head in 1842 for his radical activities, so he made plans to leave
the country. Before he did, though, he married Joan Carfrae, a Scottish Lassie, and they left Scotland the next day.
Pinkerton was 23.

Although shipwrecked on the way, the young couple eventually reached Canada. They made their way down the St.
Lawrence and through the Great Lakes; when they arrived at Detroit, they decided to try and find work there. No
luck in Detroit, though, so they used the last of their money to buy a horse and wagon and headed west to Chicago.
They arrived there in late December.

Chicago had been incorporated for just nine years and had only 43 houses and 200 inhabitants. There was always
a need for barrels, though, so Pinkerton was able to find work as a cooper. After a year or so, he and his wife piled
their meager belongings into a borrowed wheelbarrow and left for Dundee.

Soon after the Pinkertons moved to Dundee in 1843, Allan's mother Isabelle McQueen Pinkerton and his brother,
Robert joined them.

The brothers worked together for a time making and selling barrels. Allan Pinkerton built a one-story home at Main
and Third streets on the west side of the river; the building also housed his cooper shop. Thought the original home
is long gone, the site was marked in 1968 by the Dundee Township Historical Society. It was the group's first
historical marker.

Pinkerton wrote about the lovely site of Dundee in one of his books; "The town rests there on the banks of this
beautiful river stream and between the guardian hills upon either side, like twin nests where there is always song and
gladness. The town was originally settled by a few sturdy people, the hardy Scots, as its name would indicate."

A fierce believer in the right to freedom, Pinkerton supported the Abolitionist movement. In fact, he established his
home and cooper shop as a busy, important station on the Underground Railroad, a secret network of people who
clothed, fed, housed, and transported slaves escaping from their owners and fleeing to Canada.

Early Dundee residents regularly saw black workers at the Pinkerton's cooper shop. Pinkerton gave work to the
penniless, homeless slaves, and let them stay there until they continued on the Underground Railroad to become
free in Canada. The Pinkertons' home is one of the more well documented stations on the Underground Railroad
network in the Fox Falley area.

For all his generosity towards the escaping slaves, though, Allan Pinkerton didn't have enough money to buy the
wood parts to make his barrels; he had to find and cut the wood himself. And it was during one of these
wood-gathering trips that he made a discovery which led to Allan Pinkerton's history-altering career switch.
One day while cutting basswood for staves and hoops on an uninhabited island in the Fox River, Pinkerton saw
evidence that led him to believe the island was being used for something suspicious. He reported this to B. C. Yates,
the sheriff at Geneva. The sheriff and seven men formed a posse and were able to track down a gang of coin
counterfeiters from the clues they found on the island.
They rounded up the men and women in the gang and secured their equipment and bogus coins. And for a time
afterward the island was called "Bogus Island." Later, its name was changed to "Basswood Island."

Since Pinkerton's keen sense of observation and tip-off to the Sheriff had been instrumental in the capture of the
coin counterfeiters, Sheriff Yates later asked him to help apprehend another suspected counterfeiter. Pinkerton at
first declined, claiming he didn't know anything about crime-stopping. But then he agreed to give it a try. Pinkerton,
along with Dundee storekeepers Harry E. Hunt and Increase Bosworth, tricked John Craig, the suspected
counterfeiter, into showing them some of the counterfeit bills he was selling. The men agreed on an exchange rate,
and set up a meeting to make the buy at the then-unfinished Elgin Academy building ("Old Main").

At their meeting Craig sold them the counterfeit money and then Pinkerton asked about becoming a "wholesale
agent." To pursue that arrangement, they set up another meeting, this time at the Sauganash Hotel in Chicago.
When Pinkerton and a disguised police officer arrived there, Craig pretended not to know Pinkerton, probably
suspecting the trap. Craig was arrested anyway, and taken to the jail in Geneva.

But after all the effort to trap and apprehend the counterfeiter, he mysteriously escaped from jail. Craig was never
re-captured, and never stood trial for his counterfeiting crimes.

Pinkerton continued his cooper business in Dundee, giving work and shelter to escaped slaves. Ironically, he was
appointed a deputy sheriff in 1846, all the while his home serving as a station on the illegal Underground Railroad.
Nonetheless, Pinkerton kept up his abolitionist activities, even knowing that he could have been arrested at any
moment; it was illegal in Illinois to harbor escaped slaves.

After the second counterfeiting was solved, Pinkerton noticed a major change in his life -- he was now famous.
Pinkerton's role in both counterfeiting cases was written about in newspapers everywhere. Soon, Sheriff William
Church of Cook County asked him to come to Chicago as a special agent, and he accepted the job. Pinkerton had
tasted the ingrigue and excitement of detective work and decided he liked it.

In 1850, Pinkerton was urged to open his own detective business. He had a guarantee of $10,000 in business from
the Rock Island Railroad president, John F. Tracy. The Pinkertons had sold their cooperage shop to Wilhelm Schult
for $3,000 and with this solid financial footing to tide them over the shaky start-up period, Joad encouraged her
husband to go ahead and give it a try.

He named his first business Pinkerton's North Western Police Agency and a few years later changed its name to
Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. Their trademark was the wide-open eye; the slogan "We Never Sleep" gave
notice that one couldn't escape from the Pinkertons.

He continued to offer escaping slaves shelter and assistance with their freedom flights. His staunch views kept him in
the middle of the abolitionist fray and brought him in contact with such people as John Brown, with whom he became
friends. On the night of March 11, 1859, Brown stopped at Pinkerton's home and he gave Brown $500 and tickets to
get Brown and his band to Detroit, their
next stop on the way east.

Pinkerton's uncanny insights into the motives of mankind, his courage, and his organizing ability were all to flower in
dazzling achievement. Beginning with only a half dozen men, the business grew rapidly until the War Between the
States began. In 1861, President Lincoln appointed Allan Pinkerton Chief of the Secret Service Division of the War
Department. Pinkerton and his able staff provided the Government with valiant and invaluable service throughout
the war years.

During 1861, Pinkerton performed the most important service to his country ever. An assassination plot had been
uncovered; the plan was for Lincoln to be killed while traveling from Harrisburg through Baltimore and on to
Washington. Railroad officials heard rumors that secessionists were planning to blow up the steamers that ferried
the trains across the Susquehanna River. So Pinkerton devised a counter-scheme that was to foil the assassination
attempt. It also resulted in bringing the detective to everlasting fame.

Disguising himself as one "John H. Hutchinson" and adopting a Southern accent, Pinkerton established himself as a
nightly figure at one of the secessionist's favorite hangouts. One night, after having too much to drink, one of the
secessionists told Pinkerton that Lincoln was to be assassinated as he passed through Baltimore on Saturday,
February 23.

Pinkerton then went to work re-routing Lincoln's trip. He arranged for Lincoln to leave Harrisburg on February 19,
earlier than originally planned. The travel schedule switch was kept in complete secrecy, known only to a few people
--Mary Todd Lincoln, of course, being one of them.

Lincoln arrived in Washington unscathed and delivered his famous inaugural speech in front of the unfinished
Capitol on March 4, 1861, thanks to the tactics of Allan Pinkerton. Lincoln then appointed Pinkerton head of the
secret service in the Union's main army.

Pinkerton's Detective Agency continued to grow. "The Pinkertons" were routinly called in to control crowds of
restless, striking workers. The Pinkerton men were good at quelling uprisings with their violent crowd-control
methods -- beating strikers with clubs was one of their better-known techniques.

In addition to breaking up strikes and guarding presidents, Pinkerton's agency also took on the outlaws of the Old
West -- and usually they won. They captured the famous Jesse James and were successsful in finding Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

In 1864, Allan Pinkerton purchased a tract of land near the village of Onarga, Illinois, 85 miles south of Chicago on
the main line of the Illinois Central. In 1869, because of ill health, Pinkerton was forced to turn over the field
operations of the Pinkerton Detective Agency to his two sons, William and Robert. In 1873 he began the
development of his summer home on his land near Onarga. This
home, which Pinkerton affectionately called "The Villa," became one of the most beautiful showplaces of the day.

The townspeople called it "The Larches" or "The Larch Farm" because of the thousands of Larch trees Pinkerton
had imported from Scotland and placed on the property. On its 254 acres stood 18 various outbuildings and the
main house. It was a comfortable, though not elaborately built home. In decorating the home and landscaping the
property, though, he spared no expense.

The interior was lavishly furnished and murals covered the walls. Scenes depicted in the murals included various
Civil War battles and heroes, such as Sherman and his March to the Sea, and the Battle of Gettysburg. The
grounds were luxuriant with trees, shrubs, flowers in marble vases, a fish pond, and many statues.

Allan Pinkerton died July 1, 1884, and is buried in the Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. His wife and two sons are
buried in the same plot.

When Pinkerton first started sleuthing around on the Fox River, the science of detection was still in its infancy, and
outside of the military, security groups were unheard of. Pinkerton and his men virtually invented the field of security.
They developed and standardized detection methods and investigative techniques. Today's law enforcement and
other organizations can thank Pinkerton
for many of the routines and procedures they rely on to do their jobs.

Sources: Manuscript by Russell Palmer, Onarga, Illinois, Iroquois County Genealogical Society, Watseka, Illinois; "Allan Pinkerton and
the Larch Farm," Daily Times, Watseka, Dec. 2&3, 1967; Elgin Courier-News, July 28, 1991; "Allan Pinkerton, America's First Private
Eye," Richard Wormser; "Allan Pinkerton - a Town Scot," Irma Dupre, Dundee, Illinois.

The
Village of
Onarga
website:
www.onarga.net

The Allan Pinkerton and Timothy Webster books have been combined and are
now being re-published in ONE book. Orders are being taken now!

The first printing of these books was sold out in a hurry, so get yours while you can!
Each book is only $15.00. (If mailed, postage is an additional $4.00). Send your orders to:

The Lone Tree Leader, Patty Goff
111 W. Seminary Ave.
Onarga, IL. 60955

Timothy Webster

Allan
Pinkerton

The Village of Onarga
The Village of Onarga has a rich and diverse history. Stay a while and learn
about Timothy Webster, Alan Pinkerton and the Larch Farm.