Valley Girl Views: When Governor Simon Snyder Was[n't] Kidnapped

"True, I have been accused of having put the late potent governor of this powerful state, Simon Snyder, commander-in-chief of its armies, in bodily fear, and also of terrifying his exotic friend of Shamokin Island."
- The memoirs of the celebrated and beautiful Mrs. Ann Carson, by Ann Baker Carson

Several times I have come across a mention of the "kidnapping of Governor Snyder", but never the full story. I've always been intrigued, finding it odd that such a story was not well known in the area where Governor Snyders stone mansion still stands. This week, while looking through some of Selinsgrove's history, I finally found some answers. They were not at all what I expected to find.

Was Governor Snyder ever kidnapped? No - but there was a plot in place. At least, a plot is referenced in dozens of articles over the years. Evidence, and common sense however, leads me to believe the plot was to kidnap the son, in order to force the Governors hand. So it is really a story about the son of the Governor. And yet, that's not quite true either.

It's the story of Ann Baker Carson, a beautiful woman who did outlandish things. It's a bit of a love story, full of scandal and intrigue, in which the plans to kidnap the Governors son are just a small side plot. It's a story that captivated the nation in 1816, as Carson continued to make headlines for nearly a decade after the murder of her husband.

The facts can be a bit sketchy for much of the events, as the most extensive account is given by Ann herself, in memoirs she sold. As her actions proved that she was not the most trustworthy of women, her story should be read as just that - a story. An interesting story, but just a story. A story where you have to wonder, how many paid to keep their names out of Ann's Tell All Memoir.

One thing is for certain - Ann Baker Carson Smith was a character.

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Ann Baker Carson Smith [the Smith is often called her "alias" as, if that marriage actually occurred, it was not legal, her being already married to Carson at the time] was born around 1786, the daughter of a soldier who had fought in the American Revolution. She was a member of America's new Merchant Middle Class. Bright and attractive, she had a privileged upbringing, and attended one of the first co-ed schools in the nation. By her own account, she was doted on by her parents.

In Ann's memoirs, she mentions a few men being absolutely smitten with her. She was first to be married to a Nathaniel Willard, but Captain Carson, who had survived a severe bout of debilitating sickness alongside Ann's father on one of their voyages, convinced her father to allow her to marry him instead. At least, that's how Ann tells it.

Captain John Carson first laid eyes on Ann Baker when she came to Washington, where her father was recuperating from sickness contracted on his latest voyage.

Two months prior to Anns 16th birthday, with her father gravely ill, she was married to Captain John Carson.

John Carson and Ann Baker were married June 16 1801, in the Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. Ann was 2 months shy of her 16th birthday, and John was 23.

In many accounts, John is described as "twice her age", and the marriage is described as one of convenience to help her parents out of financial difficulty. But that's not really how Ann tells the story, and it also contradicts Johns' death record, which shows he was much closer to Ann's age.

The Second Presbyterian Church, on Arch Street in Philadelphia, circa1800

Although now a married woman, she continued to receive letters and poems from other suitors, and men who boarded in her home continued to be smitten with her, by her own account. Her husband was often gone for long periods of time, and during one period early in her marriage, she received news that her husband had taken seriously ill near Batvia. "Report, ever prone to exaggerate evils, had rumored he was dead."

According to Ann, Captain Harris took this opportunity to profess his ardent affection for the irresistible Ann in a letter, that she claims to have never read, but only thrown in a drawer. However, just a few paragraphs later in her memoir, she tells of Captain Carson's return, his death being only a rumor, and finding Nat Hutton, a boy who had been in love with her for many years, reading to her in her chamber.

"My husband and lover, each by turns, tortured my feeling and banished sleep."

Ann tells of her husband finding Nat's poetry and Capt. Harris' letter in her drawers, and "these excited his jealously and he vented his anger on me in terms unmanly and unjust."

Ann claimed to think of Nat is only a brother, and claimed her purity, writing "it was my unfortunate fate to inspire passion when I did not even desire that admiration all young women generally expect."

Captain Carson then found it prudent to move his wife into a home of their own - away from Nat, and the various boarders who seemed enthralled with his wife. Ann was miserable in her new home, with no doting parents, fawning suitors, nor sisters to keep her company.

She described her husband as a madly jealous tyrant, and said "my heart was untouched with love for any man." [so much for the accounts saying her parents married her off to Capt. Carson while she was in love with someone else...]

Captain Carson was soon off on another voyage, Ann discovered she was pregnant, and "a few months disgusted me with house-keeping. I gave up the establishment and returned to my mother."

Yellow fever chased her off to Darby, where she gave birth to her son John. Ann proclaims to have been purely smitten with motherhood. Captain Carson must have been gone for over a year at this time, as John was 5 months old when he first met his son. The couple, bound by the new infant, appeared to finally experience domestic bliss, for a very brief time.

Recalling this time in her life, Ann wrote "Am I that same Ann Carson, who was the idol of a fond husband, the darling of her parents, and an object of envy... to many of my prejudiced female friends?" Of all the things Ann lacked, a high opinion of herself was not one.

Established once again in their own home, Captain Carson hosted a dinner party, inviting, among others, Nat Hutton. Nat's flattering comments regarding Ann once again sent Carson into a fit of jealous temper, and Ann shut up her own house and again moved in with her mother. There Nat visited, staying for several days and professing his love to Ann. Ann yet again claims ignorance to his feelings, as Nat continues to visit walking 7 miles to visit her each day. And so her life continued - spending her time with Nat while her husband was at sea, and enduring her husbands "tyrannical jealousy", when he returned.

Eventually, Carson had had enough. He consulted Ann's Uncle and said he was willing to grant Ann a divorce so that she could marry Nat. Ann however, told her Uncle that she didn't love Nat, and had no desire to change her present situation. In her memoirs she admits that this decision was based on her not wanting her husband to have the high moral ground.

Captain Carson had been enduring problems with his work, in addition to his problems at home, and between the two, had also added a problem with alcohol into the mix. Nearly impoverished, he took his mothers family name, as his own name was no longer respected, and set off to make a new start to earn some money. He sent a letter instructing his wife to move to Charlestown, but once again, Ann chose to live with her mother instead.

It was during this time that Ann devised her own way to earn an income.

"My mind was active and enterprising...not to be intimidated by her [mother] imbecile doubts and false pride....I sold all my superfluous furniture and as Capt. C had brought me a considerable quantity of china...which at this time was getting scarce I determined to enter into the sale of china and queens-ware." She also continued to run a boarding house, along with her mother.

China was scarce in America due to the Non-Intercourse Act - a trade embargo enacted in 1809. This act contributed to the War of 1812 a few years later. Having a stock pile of sought after china at this time was a considerable asset, and a great start to a good business.

Her business a success, she wrote to her husband, and he returned home for a time. In the next few pages of her memoirs, Ann takes credit for her husbands improved opportunities, as they were based on "sympathy for her situation."

It did not however, stop the adoring attention of many other men.

"My unprotected situation at this time, and Captain Carson's ungentlemanly treatment had exposed me to the attention of several gentlemen whose views I am now convinced were not too chaste."

Among Ann's frequent visitors she names a married Quaker man, a famous Spaniard, and a phlegmatic Russian. "Had I been disposed to sell my favours, numberless indeed would have been my purchasers.... I have been laid siege to by the haughty Spaniard, for home half the belles of fashion... were sighing for in Philadelphia, in Vain.... To me the phlegmatic Russian has proffered the diamonds of Golconda.." Her story goes on, and on, listing the many many suitors who found her so very irresistible, and yet claiming her innocence with all of them. Many of the names are merely an initial followed by ----- such as M---- , and this memoir must have been quite scandalous at the time, with many filling in the blanks given. It reads as a "tell all", one can't help but wonder if anyone paid to not have their name included in her memoir.

I know all of this is quite a long lead up to the eventual kidnapping story, but after reading so many summaries of "Ann loved one boy, but was forced to marry another, at a very young age, to help her family out financially", I found her own account to be so shockingly different. She claims to have never loved any man until years after her marriage, and at the same time claims so many, many men loved her. It makes you wonder if, possibly, her parents perhaps married her off young before there was a scandal.

So there were many, many men. In her own words, "my acquaintances with gentlemen was very extensive." She did eventually fall in love, with a man that was not her husband, while she was married, but that didn't work out, he disappointed her.

Richard Smyth first arrives on the scene more than 1/4th of the way into her memoir, around page 137, while Carson is again away at sea. The story begins like all her others. He's obviously smitten with her, but she puts him off and avoids his advances. And in no time at all, Richard is proposing marriage. Ann "decidedly refused his offered hand." Or so she says.

And then follows a truly bizarre account of their marriage, which she had refused, but somehow couldn't avoid.

According to Ann, her and Richard spent the night at an Inn (in separate quarters of course!) after her refusal, and the next day, a clergyman came to the Inn where they were staying. Ann immediately knew what was about to happen, as "the gentlemen enter an adjoining room which was kept for private use."

Ann confronts Richard, telling him she absolutely cannot marry him, while he swears to not leave the house alive if she will not accept him.

Eventually, according to Ann, they agree to leave the house, but first they must go in and make their apologies to the innkeeper and clergymen. Then, and I kid you not, this is word for word from her memoir:

"I agreed to the compromise; we therefore walked into the parlour together. Here, leaning on the back of a chair, alone, stood the clergyman, who on my entrance instantly commenced the marriage ceremony. I stood astonished wonder suspended all of my faculties; my powers of articulation forsook me, and the whole passed in awful silence."

Ann claims to have never uttered a word, never saying "I Do", or yes, and yet the clergyman pronounced them husband and wife and with that "Lieut. Smyth taking the accustomed salute of my lips."

And that's how Ann explains her accidental and completely unwitting marriage to Richard Smith. While, by the way, she was sort of engaged to another man, and also, by the way, her actual husband was still alive and would soon return from sea.

As Ann describes it, "three months elapsed after our romantic wedding, when the dreaded arrival of Capt. C took place".

"Romantic Wedding".

And then follows an account of yet another man so overcome by Ann - this time it's her legal husband - and again, she refuses him. Richard arrives home, and the two husbands formally meet. This time it was Captain Carson who lived with Ann's mother and father, while Ann continued to live with her new "husband", Richard.

"I was again become the subject for public conversation, which wounded my feelings and aroused my pride."

Ann continued to refuse Carson's attempts to reconcile, but she did offer to let him have "one or all" of their children. Apparently, at this time, after her husbands return, Ann suddenly falls deeply in love with the Richard she had accidentally married in that "romantic wedding" ceremony she earlier described.

"We now seemed all the world to each other - for him only I wished to live, and would have preferred death to a separation."

Or, if you believe her parents account, Ann and John came to an agreement, in which Richard was to move out of the house and John was to move back in.

On Saturday January 20th , Capt. Carson returned to his legal home, along with Ann's parents, and Thomas Abbot present, with the intention of removing Smith from the premises. And Smith shot Captain Carson in the face.

Ann of course claims that Smith killed Carson in self defense, while Ann's own doting mother hollered for someone to "stop the murderer" as Smith attempted to flee the scene.

One of the first to arrive when the shot was fired was none other than the editor or the Philadelphia newspaper:

Captain Carson survived for two weeks after being shot, "in the most heart rendering agony.", according to the United States Gazette, Philadelphia Pa

Both Richard Smith and Ann Carson were arrested for the crime. Smith was convicted, but the all male jury could not believe the beautiful woman was capable of plotting her husbands murder.

The jury had underestimated Ann, as she was about to prove. Ann was a master plotter.

First she created a plan to break Smith out of the Walnut Street Prison. She attempted to bribe guards, and then when that didn't work, threatened to blow up the building.

Next her plan involved kidnapping the son of newspaperman John Binns. Do you remember Binns? In 1805, he was part of a duel in Montandon PA. The newspaper man was closely associated with Simon Snyder, having named one of his children after the governor.

It was this child that Ann Carson planned to kidnap, in the hopes of convincing Binns to use his influence with Snyder to have Smiths death sentence pardoned. Binns learned of that plan, and kept his son home, frustrating that plot as well.

Finally Ann plotted to kidnap Governor Snyder (or his son, depending on the account). Governor Snyder became aware of the plot, thanks to a tip from Binns, and issued a warrant for Ann's arrest.

In 1925, Snyder County Historian Agnes Selin Schoch writes about the kidnapping attempt, in her yesteryears column in the Selinsgrove Times Tribune. Her account is the most trustworthy, in my opinion, for a number of reasons including her opening statement:

"In justification of our saga on the Snyder kidnapping episode, let us first state that we heard this story many time from no less an authority than the Governor's Granddaughter, Miss Mary Kittera Snyder..." As Schoch tells it:

"Smith and Ann Carson knew that Binns and the Governor were friends, and their first effort was to bring pressure on Binns to obtain the Governor's pardon. Binns refused to speak to the Governor on the subject.

Ann then decided to kidnap Binns and hold him hostage. This plan failed. Then she tried to kidnap Binns' little son, named Snyder Binns in honor of the Governor. This plan also miscarried.

The failure of both of these plans so Infuriated the scheming Ann that she determined to go higher and kidnap the Governor's little son. Antes. The very night the plans were made, a cousin of Smith's tipped off Binns, who immediately sent the details to' Governor Snyder, who at that time was residing in his newly-built stone residence at 121 North Market street, in Selin's Grove.

The Governor went to Harrisburg and swore out a warrant for the arrest of Ann Carson, who was already on her way from Philadelphia to Selin's Grove. She was accompanied on horseback by two ruffians, named Lige Brown and Henry Way. At Lancaster they robbed a cattle drover, Way was badly beaten up in the fight md easily captured, but Ann and Lige escaped and continued on their way to Harrisburg. Ann was there arrested, but later released on $5000 bail furnished by her numerous friends of the underworld in Philadelphia, whence she returned. "

In 1932, more than 100 years after the events occurred, the Lancaster Sunday News ran the story of the "Gangster Moll" who tried to kidnap the governor.

In this colorful retelling of the Carson story, Ann is called "queen of Philadelphia's underworld, and is portrayed in a sketch, lounging in a saloon.

When Smith was sentenced to death, his confession was made public. In it, he had nothing good to say about the "much celebrated" Ann Carson.

"After the army was disbanded, I came to Philadelphia, where, alas! I met with her who is the cause of my present misery. I will not attempt to describe the arts and intrigues which were practised to induce me to take this even woman to my bosom; a woman who is versed in all the wiles and machinations of that diabolical spirit... Had I known the peculiar situation in which Ann Carson was placed at the time in which I was seduced by her into the bands of matrimony, her endeavors would have proved fruitless."

He goes on to say "I suffered myself to be deceived by her incantation, & for awhile thought I was in the possession of happiness."

Smith was executed for his crime on August 10th 1816, at the age of 23.

Now a widow twice over, with her legal husband murdered and her second, unlawful husband, hung on the gallows, Ann had no money. But she did have one more plan - this time to sell her life story. Her autobiography, the second edition titled The Memoirs Of The Celebrated and Beautiful Mrs Ann Carson. [In her defense, the adjectives appear to have been added later, her first version being titles simply "The Memoirs Of Ann Carson"]

In those writings, she has much to say about Gov. Simon Snyder, and none of it is very nice.

"Cruel, relentless man - even in the grave I abhor and detest thy memory; nor can years of misery, months of dreary confinement, eradicate from my bosom the mortal hatred I bear to thee. May the name of Snyder ever be abhorred, and when the adding traveler shall turn aside to view the tomb that contains all that remains of Richard Smyth, detest as I do the hand that smote him. My tears flow in anguish but to recall the horrors of that awful moment of thy death, devoted victim of prejudice. Many will perhaps, condemn this expression of resentment; but alas! may I not indulge myself in breathing forth my sorrows, grief, and devastation on the bosom of friendship. I might indeed have ceased to abhor Simon Snyders memory, could I believe that his motives for a refusal to sign Richard's parson originated in a love of justice and a desire to deter others from pursuing a line of conduct inimical to the good order of society; but I am too well convinced that no such feeling actuated him. No, no' Richard was sacrificed on the shrine of intest; from motives of policy he withheld a pardon which he feared would injure him in the estimation of the public. "

But then if we've learned anything by now, it's to not take anything the celebrated Ann Carson says too seriously.

Returning to the narrative by Agnes Selin Shoch:

"Ann Carson after returning to Philadelphia donned the demure dress of a Quakeress, and thus masquerading , continued her life of crime. It was in that disguise that she tried to pass a counterfeit note on the Girard Bank, for which crime she was sentenced to seven years in the Walnut street prison. This old prison can still be seen back of the 400 block on Walnut street, surrounded by tall insurance offices.

Walnut Street Prison, Philadelphia PA.

While in prison -there Ann Carson was a kind nurse to her fellow prisoners, many of whom were suffering with typhus fever. At this time there was a plague of typhus fever in Philadelphia. Ann contracted the disease and died in prison"

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Note that in some retellings, Captain Carson's age is given as as much as 25 years older than Ann. His age, at the time of his death, is recorded as 38. [some accounts put him in his 40s when he married] Coincidentally, Ann died at age 38 as well. Their death records tell us that John was born around 1778, and Ann around 1786- a difference of 8 years. An age difference of 8 years was completely normal, and actually the average age difference between a husband and wife, at that time. Richard Smith was born about 1793, making him roughly 7 years younger than Ann Carson.

1816-02-05; Paper: Democratic Press

"DEATH - Captain JOHN CARSON, who was shot on Saturday, January 2d by H. H. Smith, departed this life, about 11 o'clock last night."

Carson was originally buried at the 2nd Presbyterian Church, but when that cemetery closed in 1867, his was one of 2500 burials moved to Mount Vernon.