The first full-length biography of a saloon-brawling braggart and frontier opportunist turned justice of the peace
Henry Theodore Titus (1822-1881) was the quintessential adventurer, soldier of fortune, and small-time entrepreneur, a man for whom any frontier—geographical, cultural, social—was an opportunity for advancement. Although born in Trenton, New Jersey, and raised in New York and Pennsylvania, Titus bore no allegiance to his native soil or the Yankee values of his ancestors. In the 1850s he became a staunch defender of southern slavery, United States expansionism into the Caribbean Basin, and ultimately the Confederacy's war of disunion. In Colonel Henry Theodore Titus, the first full-length biography of Titus, Antonio Rafael de la Cova reveals a man whose life and adventures offer glimpses into nineteenth-century America not often examined; these indicate the extent to which personal and collective violence, racial prejudice, and moral ambiguities shaped the country at the time.
Belligerent, intemperate, egomaniacal, and of imposing stature, Titus was the bête noire of the abolitionist press. Despite his northern roots, he became a caricature of the southern braggart and frontier opportunist. National newspapers followed his reckless exploits during most of his adult life. Titus fought brawls in the saloons of luxury hotels and narrowly escaped the hangman's noose as a Border Ruffian leader in Bleeding Kansas, a Nicaraguan firing squad as a filibuster, and death in a Comanche ambush in Texas. He nearly prompted an international incident between the United States and Great Britain when he was arrested in Nicaragua for threatening to shoot a British naval officer and disparaging the queen of England. The colonel was jailed in New York City for disorderly conduct and trying "to organize the desperate classes for a riot."
During his lifetime Titus held more than a dozen occupations, including sawmill owner, postal inspector, soldier of fortune, grocer, planing mill salesman, farmer, slave overseer, turtler, bartender, land speculator, and hotel keeper. He pursued silver mining in the Gadsden Purchase portion of the Arizona Territory where his brother was killed and their hacienda destroyed by Apaches. Despite his violent character and his pro-Confederate values, Titus was politically savvy. He did not take up arms during the Civil War. After a brief stint as assistant quartermaster in the Florida militia, he returned to civilian life and sold foodstuffs and slave labor to the Confederacy. Florida Reconstruction governors later appointed him as notary public and justice of the peace.
Rheumatism and gout kept Titus bound to a wheelchair during the last few years of his life when he became an avid civic leader. His greatest legacy was ironically his most benign. Borrowing today's equivalent income value sum of half a million dollars, he established a grocery store and a sawmill in a hardscrabble Florida frontier settlement that became the city of Titusville, the county seat of Brevard County and tourist gateway to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.
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Robert Titus, a thirty-five-year-old English agriculturalist from St. Catherine’s Parish, Stansted Abbey, Hartfordshire, boarded the ship Hopewell in London on April 3, 1635, with his twenty-one-year-old wife Hannah and their sons John, age eight, and Edmond, five, along with sixty-four other passengers. Titus was going to settle a land grant he received in what is presently Brookline, Massachusetts, near Muddy River. After two or three years there, the family moved to a six-acre farm in Weymouth, Massachusetts, where four other offspring were born. They worshiped at the Church of Weymouth and followed the congregation in 1643 to the shore of the Blackstone River, where they founded Rehoboth, Massachusetts. The following year Titus received one of the fifty-eight land lots drawn “for a division of the woodland between the plain and the town.” He then signed a compact of mutual assistance with the other pioneers.1
Titus was highly esteemed in his community. At a general town meeting in 1645 he was appointed as collector of revenue, and he was later assigned with seven other men to inspect and judge the sufficiency of the fences on their colony. However, Titus had a stubborn, independent character that soon led to conflicts with other townspeople. The Titus family was banished from the colony on June 6, 1654, for letting Abner Ordway and family, deemed “persons of evil fame,” reside in their home. The Tituses were the first expulsions listed in the Plymouth Colony record.2
Robert’s grandson John Titus (1677–1761), born in Newtown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, moved with his wife Rebecca to Hopewell, Mercer County, New Jersey, nine miles northwest of Trenton, in the early eighteenth century. They bought land on a bluff overlooking the Delaware River that they dubbed Titusville, adjacent to present-day Washington Crossing State Park, commemorating where George Washington made his historic river landing during the American Revolution. The couple had nine children, the second of whom, Andrew (1723–1800), married Hannah Borrowes and had a son, John (1752–1827). John wed Sarah Mershon of nearby Lawrenceville. Their firstborn, Theodore Titus, described as “the finest-looking man of his time,” at the age of twenty-six married Catherine Ellett Howell in June 1820. She was the twenty-one-year-old daughter of Ellett Howell, a sixty-four-year-old Trenton merchant and former second lieutenant of a company of light infantry militia during the Revolutionary War. Their first of eight children, Henry Theodore Titus, was born on February 13, 1822, at the family estate on the road two and one-half miles northwest of Trenton. It was a four-hundred-acre farm with a hillside stream that powered a gristmill and a brewery operated by forty slaves. The soil was “fertile and the landscape varied and beautiful” with a 150-foot elevation that offered “a fine view of the City of Trenton, South Trenton and Morrisville, and a beautiful and extensive prospect of the country on both sides of the Delaware river.” In 1824 Theodore Titus sold his land, manumitted his slaves, and moved to Auburn, New York.3
Five years later the New York legislature authorized the construction of the Chemung Canal to connect Seneca Lake and the Erie Canal with the Chemung River, a branch of the Susquehanna River extending through Pennsylvania and Maryland. The twenty-three-mile canal and its sixteen-mile feeder would require fifty-three wooden locks. Theodore Titus saw it as an opportunity to speculate in land and subcontract as a sawyer for its development. In 1829 he moved with his family to Havana, New York, near the head of Seneca Lake. Today it is the village of Montour Falls in Schuyler County. Titus became an agent for Amasa Dana, who had recently purchased the lands of David Ayers, which comprised 150 Havana lots. Titus advertised in the Havana Observer that all persons indebted to Ayers, or “Persons desirous of purchasing lots in said village, will call upon the said Titus, who is duly authorized to sell.”4
On April 30, 1830, Theodore Titus purchased from Harmon Pumpelly nine lots in Havana for $1,545.47. The next day he and his wife sold a $40.00 lot to Elijah H. Goodwin, the future Chemung Canal superintendent, director of the Chemung Canal Bank, and state legislator. The 1830 federal census indicates that the Titus family had three boys and four girls. Eight-year-old Henry received his primary education from the pioneer schoolteacher Thomas Nichols Jr., a Revolutionary War veteran, who infused patriotism in his students with tales of battlefield glory and contempt toward the British. On July 4 the Titus family joined a large celebrant crowd around the Elmira courthouse that gathered to witness the nearby groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Chemung Canal. Young Henry was impressed with the festivity in which whiskey flowed freely during “25 regular and 28 volunteer toasts” and artillery boomed in celebration. The canal, mostly dug with pick and shovel, would have a prism “42 feet across at the surface, 26 feet across at the base, and 4 feet deep.”5
The Chemung Canal, its locks, the transportation vessels, and the laborers’ dwellings were all built with nearby choice stands of pine, white oak, maple, and beech. Theodore Titus established a lumber business at Havana, a trade that he and his son pursued for the rest of their lives. The patriarch also owned and operated a “mammoth distillery” that serviced the canal workers, mostly recent Irish immigrants. Henry Titus spent his early years assisting his father at the sawmill and the distillery alongside the working poor, who were characterized by intemperance and swearing, traits that the youth permanently adopted. The canal construction prompted an increase in land value. On November 9, 1830, the Tituses transacted lot 68 in Havana to the thirty-year-old lumber dealer Calvin Cooley Jr. for $130. Four months later the couple sold lot 38 to the thirty-eight-year-old lumberman and New York Militia lieutenant colonel Jonathan Paul Couch for $150. Cooley and Couch were constituent members of the local Presbyterian church.6
By early 1832 the Titus family had moved ten miles south of Havana to Catlin as the canal work progressed along the eastern boundary of Tioga County. Catlin had a sawmill, a gristmill, a tavern, a cemetery, and a log schoolhouse that ten-year-old Henry Titus probably attended. The Tituses then sold Havana village lot 53 to the Scottish investor James Talcott Gifford for one hundred dollars on March 8. The Chemung Canal progress decreased that summer due to bad weather and after many workers deserted upon not being paid by subcontractors. In August, Theodore Titus traveled to New York City, where his name appeared on the “List of Letters Remaining in the Post Office.” Later that month he was among more than one hundred republican electors from Tioga, Tompkins, and Steuben Counties who called for a town meeting in Havana on August 22 to denounce the Jacksonian Democratic “misrule of the present national and state administrations.” Henry apparently accompanied his father during his travels and to political meetings at an early age, as he later became involved in similar Whig activities. By 1833 the Tituses had drifted another fifteen miles southwest to the village of Painted Post, at the confluence of the Chemung and Cohocton Rivers, in Steuben County. It was located at the summit level of the Chemung feeder canal, its guard-lock, dam, and log chute. On February 22 the patriarch sold one quarter of an acre of land in Havana to Elijah H. Goodwin for four hundred dollars. He then traveled to New York City late that summer and afterward relocated with his family another ten miles farther southwest to Addison in Steuben County. On September 9 Mr. and Mrs. Titus sold lot 97 in Havana for seven hundred dollars to the lumber manufacturer Gen. Ransom Rathbone. The Chemung Canal became fully operational in November 1833 and then closed for the winter the following month until reopening in late April.7
Canal maintenance and distilling whiskey kept Theodore Titus busy for the next few years. While seeking work opportunities, he was one of seventy-five delegates at a convention held at the courthouse in Bath, Steuben County, on December 17, 1834, calling for the construction of a railroad between New York City and Lake Erie through the southern counties of their state. Titus envisioned his sawmill providing railroad ties for the enterprise. Committees were appointed to prepare resolutions and a memorial to the state legislature. The economic crisis called the Panic of 1837 temporarily derailed the plans of the New York and Erie Railroad and also affected the Titus family finances. The Tituses then moved by stagecoach, canal boat, and river steamer to Philadelphia, where fifteen-year-old Henry enrolled in public school. He became prominent “not from proficiency in his studies or development of intellect,” as he was not noted for either, but because “he was large for his years and possessed of great physical beauty.” The patriarch soon returned to Havana, where on November 22, 1837, he bargained village lot 50 to the state assemblyman Elijah H. Goodwin for one hundred dollars. Goodwin had been instrumental a year earlier in the incorporation of the village. While the price of the lots had steadily risen during the previous seven years, they had by now bottomed out. Titus made less than one hundred dollars profit from the sale of all his landed property.8
Ten days later Theodore Titus petitioned Steuben County court judge John Cooper Jr. so “that his estate might be assigned for the benefit of his creditors and that his person might be hereafter exempt from arrest or imprisonment by reason of debts arising from contracts previously made.” Titus afterward published an advertisement in the Albany Argus calling on his creditors to appear before Judge Cooper on March 3, 1838, relating to “voluntary assignments by an insolvent, for the purpose of exonerating his person from imprisonment.” A week later the patriarch was back in Havana executing the indenture of the last property he sold in the village. In April he was in New York City looking for other business opportunities. His oldest son, Henry, in all likelihood accompanied him during these travels.9
Theodore Titus made a partnership agreement on November 2, 1838, with John Rice of Allentown, Pennsylvania, for sixty-six hundred acres of land on Hickory Ridge, near the Lehigh River and White Haven, in Luzerne County, purchased from Henry Colt for seventy-five hundred dollars in “joint promissory notes.” Rice advanced two thousand dollars to erect on the premises “a saw mill, a dwelling house, a tenant house, and a stable” and clear ten acres of land for a lumber “manufacturing and agricultural business.” Titus would be the only partner residing on the property and receiving a five-hundred-dollar salary for the first year. The 1840 federal census indicates that the family lived in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and that Henry had five younger sisters and a brother. Two other brothers had died in infancy. In August 1840 the patriarch and eighteen-year-old Henry, who worked with him at the sawmill, were part of a local group of citizens invited to travel on the completed first section of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Rail Road. The line spanned twenty-one miles and connected the North Branch division of the Pennsylvania Canal at Wilkes-Barre with the Lehigh River at White Haven. Theodore Titus was appointed to a committee of twenty-two persons assigned to draft a preamble and resolutions expressive of the event. They reported that “This Rail Road will be the great thoroughfare to market for the Agricultural, Commercial, and Mineral wealth of those counties north of the Lehigh river, that seek an outlet to New York, or Philadelphia.”10
During the first week of July 1843, fifteen-year-old Ellett Titus accompanied his mother to visit the patriarch at his sawmill. They traveled for four hours on the bright-red cars of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Rail Road from Wilkes-Barre to White Haven. While heading home on Saturday, the 8th, the family rode a train ten miles from White Haven to the head of the Ashley Planes at Solomon’s Gap, an elevation of 1,681 feet on Penobscot Mountain. The newly built Ashley Planes were three tiers of a steep incline rail line leading down to the village of Ashley in the Wyoming Valley. The three planes were from top to bottom 4,361, 3,775, and 4,894 feet long, with 1,320 feet between the planes with two parallel tracks, making a total distance of more than 2.5 miles. Upon finding that public conveyance on the planes was unavailable that day, Theodore Titus put his family in a truck car that he used for transporting his lumber. The Tituses passed the first incline at a 9.3 percent grade with the aid of a common brake. When they reached the top of the second plane, which descended at an 8.6 percent grade, the patriarch was advised to fasten onto the car the wooden brake blocks that were applied to the wheels by means of a hand lever. This was a mandatory safeguard of the railroad company for all cars passing the planes. In a hurry to get home before dark and being confident of his control over the car, the headstrong Theodore rejected the advice and began the steep drop without the additional brakes. The freight car rapidly gained uncontrollable speed and smashed into another one stopped in the middle plane, scattering its cargo. The forty-three-year-old Mrs. Titus was thrown nearly fifty feet and was a “mangled mass” when her head fatally struck a rock. Her husband was found some ten feet away from the wreck “bruised, lacerated, senseless.” Ellett landed some thirty feet distant “with a skull fracture, and other dangerous wounds.” Father and son were so gravely injured that their recovery was initially considered doubtful. Three weeks later the Philadelphia North American wrote that they were “out of danger” and “rapidly recovering.” The dreadful accident was reported in more than a dozen eastern newspapers.11
Henry Titus blamed his father’s recklessness for the death of his beloved mother. He angrily left home and returned to Philadelphia, where in 1845 a relative who was a distinguished lawyer helped him obtain employment as a postal inspector. The youth was one of the most “dashing and fashionable boarders at Jones’ Hotel in Chestnut Street, drove a splendid pair of fast trotters, and was the admiration of all the ladies.” Titus did not keep permanent lodging, because his name frequently appeared on the “List of Letters Remaining in the Philadelphia Post Office” in the Public Ledger newspaper. He later boasted that he had “traveled some” as “Secret Agent of the Post Office Department.” In 1846 Titus did not join either of the two Pennsylvania volunteer regiments raised to fight in the Mexican War. Instead he was employed the following year as a clerk on the steamer Germantown, plying the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers between Cincinnati and St. Louis. After the vessel was destroyed by fire in September 1849, Titus remained in Louisville, Kentucky. His father had married a Virginia woman, and they were living in Manhattan’s Lower West Side, where he worked as a “wood sawyer.”12
That fall Titus got involved in the Cuba filibuster expeditions of 1849–51...
