The telegraph brings us the information that Timothy Webster was hung as a spy at Richmond a few days since. While reading that paragraph, in this paper Saturday morning how many of our readers had an idea that the man who suffered the death penalty was an acquaintance of theirs – or that he had for several years been a resident of this city and had mingled with the people generally? Very few we presume and yet it is true that Timothy Webster was one of our citizens and that he was tolerably well known in Davenport.
Immediately after the desperate attempt made by the enemies of the railroad bridge here to burn it down – which occurred, we believe in the spring of 1859 – there came to this town a man by the name of J. H. Reed, who immediately took charge of the bridge. The same man was no other than Timothy Webster. Reed was not his name – at least not his real name. For several years before coming to this city [he] had been in the secret police service not only in Chicago but in New York. In that service he was in the habit of changing his name to suit circumstances. When he came here it is understood that he came not only to act as Superintendent of the bridge, but was also here in the capacity of a member of the secret police, for the purpose of ferreting out the projectors of those schemes against the safety of that structure. He was here nearly two years, we should say, and during that time was known by the name of Reed. It will be remembered that during the trial of Bissell at Chicago, that the Chicago papers in reporting the testimony of Mr. Webster, and that the papers here mentioned at the time that the particular testimony should have been reported as that of Mr. Reed.
When he left this city, which we are bound to say was under rather questionable circumstances, he reported that he was going to enter a company then forming in New York for government service. Aside from this he informed a citizen that he was in fact about to join an organization in that city for the purpose of acting as spies. He left, and we have not heard from him until the telegraph informs us that the daring man died by the halter in the enemy’s capital. That he is the same man known here as J. H. Reed, there is probably no great room for doubt. Mr. Webster had a family living in Illinois, somewhere on the line of the Peoria and Oquawaka Railroad. We believe that he had a wife and two children living there. The report that the had his wife with him, and that she was in Richmond at the time of Webster’s execution, is a matter very easily understood and explained by those who understand the workings and intricate machinery of the secret police service. We doubt not that some female, passing as his wife, was with him, and that when it became known to him that his fate was sealed, that he revealed his true name that his friends who knew him only by that name, would learn of his fatal misfortune. Webster was a man about forty years old. We should judge – of good personal appearance and pleasant address. We regret that he has thus been brought to the end of his career. – Davenport Democrat.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 10, 1862, p. 4
