The 1864 Heist of Gold Coins Bound for Gettysburg

One year after the battle of Gettysburg and one month before Sherman’s March to the Sea, a bold and bloody bank robbery took place in the little railroad town of Corry, nestled in the woods of northwestern Pennsylvania about one hundred miles north of Pittsburgh.

It was August of 1864 when, according to syndicated reports circulating in national newspapers, the gang of four criminals from Pittsburgh got wind that $50,000 in gold coins were sitting in a bank at Corry awaiting transfer to the Pennsylvania regiments camped in Gettysburg.

A few days before the robbery, two front men, Dave Williams and Conn Clifford arrived in Corry to get the lay of the land. They scouted the town, the bank, and its employees.

The morning of the robbery, accomplices Mose Lyons and Abe Richards arrived at eleven on a wagon drawn by a team of greys they had bought in Pittsburgh. Hid in the bottom of the buggy was an arsenal of six-shooters, “numerous enough to defy a regiment of soldiers,” according to reports.

At one in the afternoon the four went to the bank. Clifford and Williams waited with the horses while Lyons and Richards walked in and told the cashier that they wanted to open an account and deposit a large draft from New York.

While they talked to the cashier Williams came into the bank waving a gun in each hand. Lyons and Richards jumped through the teller’s window, pulled their revolvers, and shot the cashier.

Locals ran to the front of the bank and within two to three minutes the robbers appeared with a box of the gold coins and rode away rapidly with citizens and police in pursuit on foot and horseback. Two citizens were hit by gunfire and three policemen were shot off their horses before the chase was given up.

The four robbers were hightailing it back toward Pittsburgh but a team of volunteer soldiers tracked them to the banks of the Ohio River where a fierce gun battle ensued. Two days after the robbery the quartet died of their wounds, and the money was recovered.

Late in the nineteenth century historians labelled the Corry heist “the boldest of the decade” – a remarkable tag considering the infamous Jesse James gang operated in the 1860’s.