Abe Buzzard, West Conshohocken. Have You Ever Heard of Him?

West Conshohocken Celebrating 150 Years of Incorporation

Abe Buzzard, Have You Ever Heard of Him?

Perhaps Your Grandparents or Great Grandparents Did!

By Jack Coll

6-12-24

     I’d like to join in on West Conshohocken’s sesquicentennial celebration by writing a few articles on it’s history.  However, as I thumb through the West Conshohocken files, I feel like I’ve written their entire history at one time or another, which is interesting to me but I feel like I’m writing the same history over and over in bits and pieces, in other words, “nothing new.”

     So, as I thumb through the West Conshohocken files in my library, I see files for Schools, Police, Streets, People, Churches, Industry, Sports, and on and on, I get to the very back of the file’s where I have these sort-of  weird, files, articles, information and stories that don’t fit into the usual categories and thought, I’d share a few of these stories like the recently published, “Thar’s Gold In Them West Conshohocken Hills.”

     So, here’s the story about a guy named Abe Buzzard, and his brush with the borough of West Conshohocken all those years ago!

     Conshohocken Recorder Headline, Tuesday, March 19, 1935

“Abe Buzzard, Outlaw, Dies;

Preached in West Side Church”

Photo     Abe Buzzard

     This 1935 headline grabbed me, it sounded weird, exciting, with a little bit of mystery, “OUTLAW,” how can you not stop and read this?

     Abe Buzzard, well, a little research on Abe Buzzard showed he was the leader of the famous Welch Mountain gang of outlaws. The last name Buzzard, at one time Bowzard,  but due to the family penchant for foul play it was changed to Buzzard.

     In 1935, the notorious Buzzard gang was made up of four brothers including Abe, Isaac, John

and Martin that started off by being small time crooks, stealing chickens, horses and jewels from residents of the Welsh Mountains residing in Lancaster County  between the current Pennsylvania Turnpike and the old Route 30.  According to information on the internet the Welsh Mountains is a community that cuts through Lancaster and Chester County’s. Throughout the late 1800’s the mountains were a place of refuge for escaped slaves, free blacks and natives avoiding deportation to reservations.  Many of the whites who fled into the mountain were criminals or running from indentured servitude. 

     The petty criminals soon became attempted murderers as they graduated to gunpoint robberies during a spree that lasted throughout the late 19^th century.   According to an article posted on September 23, 2018, under the headline “The Most Notorious Criminals In Lancaster County’s History”, it noted that Abe, born on Christmas Day, 1852, in a Welsh Mountain cabin, was the ring-leader of the gang, who had eventually moved on to cracking safes and robbing bars, stores, homes, hotels and trains in Lancaster and Chester Counties.

     It was noted that Abe would assume the role of a preacher and would host revival meetings that were popular in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  Conshohocken would often host these type of revival meetings at the corner of Second Avenue and Forrest Street.  It wasn’t uncommon for the revival troop to show up, pitch a large tent for two weeks in August in Conshohocken, (Not Abe Buzzard and his brothers, but a legitimate revival groups) and during those two weeks you could hear the wave of music and, song and scripture cutting through the thick air on those hot summer nights and the sweet sound of music was heard throughout the valley.

     So, Abe would assume the role of preacher and roll into a town under the disguise hosting revival meetings to draw the residents out of their homes to attend the revival while his brothers robbed the farms and houses of those in attendance.

     The Buzzard boys spent a good portion of their life in prison, the same prison but different cells.  Abe trained a canary to carry messages to his brother Ike’s cell, by which they planned their escape.  In 1883 the Buzzard brothers organized the largest prison escape in Lancaster County, springing more than a dozen prisoners.  Bounties were put out for Abe Buzzard that was larger than those offered for Western outlaw Jesse James. 

    A year after the escape in 1884, the Buzzard Brothers were back at it robbing a jewelry store in Bowmansville, the Horse Thieves Detective Association of Bowmansville-Goodwill-Honeybrook formed a posse and vowed to take them dead or alive.

     The internet article from September 23, 2018 stated that in 1924 a appeared a notice in a local newspaper that read: 42 Years in Jail—Abe Buzzard, known as the Welsh Mountain desperado, will be released from the Eastern Penitentiary today, being 72 years old.  Forty-two years of his life was spent behind prison doors.  At one time he lived with his wife on the ridge of hills near Ephrata.  In the late 1920’s many nearby Lititz residents remembered when Abe, as an evangelist, spoke in the United Brethren Church in Lititz.  In his handbag, beside a bible, he carried a revolver.  Following his visit at Lititz, he stole chickens that very night, walking backwards in the snow as a trick to mislead anyone tracking him.

     All of this information leads us to West Conshohocken.  A Recorder article dated March 19, 1935, stated that Abe Buzzard at the turn of the century temporarily forsook his trail of crime, claiming he had “got religious” and started out as a “converted outlaw” to preach.  For a couple of years, he appeared in churches of many towns giving an account of his life and pointing out that “crime don’t pay.” 

     Buzzard made a number of appearances in a West Conshohocken Church, and in 1935, when his obituary appeared in the Recorder there were plenty of residents who could recall his visits to the church.  When Buzzard preached in West Conshohocken, he was around 50 years old at the turn of last century.   His lecture tour ended when he fell under suspicion again and authorities found in his bag, along with a bible and hymn book, a pistol and set of burglar tools, he went back to jail.          

     The Conshohocken Recorder article never mentioned the name of the West Conshohocken Church where Abe Buzzard had preached his sermons although there was only four churches in the borough at that time, the first being a church called Pyle’s Memorial Wesleyan Church, I’m not sure of the location of that church back then. 

     The second West Side church it could have been was the Primitive Methodist Church that opened in 1896.  Back then the congregation worshiped under the rules of Free Baptist Denomination.  And then there was the Balligomingo Baptist Church built in 1907.

     A little research showed that Buzzard preached in a West Conshohocken Church known as the Heavenly Recruit Church,

     That name would match-up with  Heavenly Recruits Association, a church erected in 1888 and was West Conshohocken’s oldest Church, the church was located at 519 Ford Street and founded by Rev. Edwin L. Hyde.  In 1894 the name of the church was changed to Holiness Christian Association and in 1897 the name was changed once again to Holiness Christian Church.  In later years the name was changed again to reflect its religion, the Evangelical Christian Church and when Jim Greipp purchased the church building in 2008, the church was known as the Wefleyn Evangelical Church.

     Mr. Greipp converted the old church into a commercial Advertising and Photography Studio.  Jim has owned and operated his company Pau Hana Productions since 1992 and is regarded as one of the best production companies in the business.

     When Abe’s obituary ran in the Conshohocken Recorder on March 19, 1935, waves of West Conshohocken residents had recalled his time preaching at the Heavenly Recruit Church in the west borough.

     Abe’s obituary was also run in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times newspaper along with other local papers throughout the Lancaster area.

     When Abe was freed from prison in 1921, he promised once more to reform.  “I’m old,” he said, “I don’t want to rot in jail,” he’d also been shot five times over the years.  But a few years later the sight of a chicken coop near West Chester wrecked his good intentions.  Abe eventually died in prison on St. Patrick’s Day, 1935.  It was said that he and his three brothers spent a total of 101 years in prison.

    Abe’s brother Joe who spent many years in jail as of 1935, completed his sentence at Eastern State Penitentiary but having no place to go and being so much at home in the penal institution he decided to spend the remainder of his life there.

     Abe is buried in a cemetery on the shoulder of Neversink Mountain and has a headstone that reads only “Beloved Husband.”  It was said that Abe’s family was concerned that revenge-seekers would desecrate his final rest if they knew the location.

     That’s the way it was all those years ago, Happy Birthday West Conshohocken!

If you follow us on Facebook, you may have noticed we have been talking about the Conshohocken Baseball & Softball league building a batting cage. Here’s your chance to help the cause for the youth of our community. Conshohocken Baseball & Softball League Buy A Brick Fundraiser – (4everbricks.com)

Thank you.