Unhappy Horse Thief

Joe Buzzard speaks of his late brother Abe humbly, with a certain amount of family pride. Says Joe: "He was the best derned hoss thief in the country." If Joe is not so good a horse thief as his brother, he is equally persistent. The first time he was caught stealing a horse from a farmer in Lancaster County, Pa. was in 1878. The last time was in 1931.

The Buzzard brothers--they were six--never got on well with the diligent, godly Mennonites and Amishmen of Lancaster County. One Sunday in 1867 a preacher tried to put them out of church and they were so annoyed that they broke the preacher's arm. As a result of that, they joined their mother who was in the county workhouse on a larceny charge. When the brothers got out they ran away from school and set up a sort of Robin Hood headquarters in the Welsh Mountains in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Abe, who was the organizing type, collected a band of about 20 free spirits, set them to robbing chicken coops and stealing horses and buggies. They lived in a cave at a place called Blue Rock and every night they rolled a great stone across the entrance.

After a few years the Terrible Buzzards broke up. A few of them even married and settled down. But not Abe, not Joe. In 1893 Abe persuaded Governor Pattison that he was a reformed character and deserved a pardon. Thereupon, he went piously from town to town preaching sermons on "Ruin and Reform." Very soon, when he was arrested again for stealing chickens, the county constables found a pistol and burglar's tools in his bag along with his Bible and hymn book. From then on he was never out of jail for very long at a time. In 1935, in the Cherry Hill prison of Philadelphia, he died. His modest brother Joe was with him at the time.

Joe was fond of the Cherry Hill prison, having been in it pretty consistently for 20 years. Shortly afterward he was set free--75 and still surprisingly spry. Two months later he was arrested in Wilmington, Del. for stealing two bedspreads. Three months after that sentence expired, he stole a suitcase from an automobile. So last week he was in trouble again. Joe Buzzard's venerable age saved him from Delaware's famed whipping post. Chief Justice Daniel Layton's remarks as he sentenced him to two more years, however, were sufficiently humiliating: "You're old enough to know better." Joe Buzzard agreed. The suitcase for whose theft he began his 14th jail term belonged to a shoe salesman, contained nothing but tennis shoes, all for the left foot.

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