A friend back in the USA recently sent me a stack of
Civil War magazines, as he knows I am a fan (in fact, it was the biggest topic
of study during my University days). I grabbed the first one on the pile last
night and read it cover-to-cover. While I enjoyed the whole issue, the best
came near the end when there was a passing mention of one of my ancestors!
The article was ‘Swindling Sociopath’ by Bob Gordon,
about a man named Alexander ‘Sandy’ Keith. Keith was Scottish born, but came of
age in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When the Civil War broke out, Keith set himself up
as a key ‘Confederate Sympathizer’ in the port. In reality, the man was a
swindler and fraudster with a nasty habit of insuring ships and then plotting
their destruction at sea! He would survive the war, but committed suicide in
1875 after one of his plots went awry, and a barrel of dynamite meant to blow up a ship,
exploded in the port of Bremerhaven, Germany killing 60 people.
Back in 1864, my great-great-uncle, Norman Walker,
(brother of my direct ancestor Maj. John Stewart Walker) who served as the
Confederate agent in Bermuda came to Halifax with his family to escape an outbreak of yellow
fever. While there, Keith convinced Norman to invest $40,000 in a shipment of
barreled pork to smuggle into the Confederacy. Keith took the money, but never
bought the pork, and doesn’t seem to have made any attempt to do so. Anyway, he
soon slipped into the USA, and went beyond Norman’s reach.
The article doesn’t give any more details of the story,
and perhaps that is where it ended. I’ve certainly never heard the story
before, but I do have a copy of the hard-to-obtain diary of Norman Walker’s wife, and it does
put the family in Halifax at the time – and it’s not surprising that such a
story might not be mentioned! I'd love to know where the author discovered those details.
How great is that though? Picking up a magazine at random
and learning a little piece of your own family history?
