BRATTLEBORO — Local author Tim Weed will discuss the legend of “Thunderbolt” and the unique Round Schoolhouse in Brookline at the Brattleboro Words Project's monthly roundtable discussion on Thursday, Dec. 13, from 6 to 7 p.m., at 118 Elliot, across from the firehouse in downtown Brattleboro.
The event is free and refreshments will be served. Monthly roundtables are a chance for the public and Project researchers to gather, swap stories, and make progress in creating audio for the Brattleboro Words Trail.
“I was drawn to the whole legend because of the Round Schoolhouse,” said Weed, who is close to completing his extensively researched novel whose working title is The Confession of Michael Martin. “My friend Jon Jesup was renovating it and the whole story just caught my imagination.”
Weeks before his execution for highway robbery in 1821, in a prison cell in Cambridge, Mass., a young Irishman named Michael Martin wrote a confession detailing a series of bold robberies that had taken place a few years earlier in southern Ireland. The confession, which was distributed in a widely read pamphlet, implicated the young highwayman's mentor, a Scotsman named John Doherty, alias “Captain Thunderbolt.”
At around the same time, a Scottish immigrant known as Dr. John Wilson, a schoolteacher, designed the unique round brick schoolhouse that remains a Vermont historical landmark in Brookline, which will be one of at least 30 sites on the Brattleboro Words Trail audio tours.
After a few years, Wilson gave up teaching school, became a practicing physician, and owned land and a steam mill in Williamsville and Newfane.
After his death in 1847, some of those who knew him came to suspect that he was none other than the “Captain Thunderbolt” who had figured so prominently in Martin's 1821 confession.
There was quite a bit of argument in the months that followed concerning whether Wilson was or was not the infamous outlaw, and the controversy drew the attention of a number of important newspapers.
Brattleboro publisher J.B. Miner took advantage of the widespread interest in the story by reprinting Martin's confession in a booklet titled The Confession of Michael Martin or Captain Lightfoot, who was hung at Cambridge, Mass., in 1821, for the Robbery of Major Bray - Also, an account of Dr. John Wilson, supposed to be the celebrated Captain Thunderbolt.
The booklet became a runaway national bestseller, putting Brattleboro on the map in the world of publishing and cementing Wilson's posthumous reputation as the infamous highwayman.
The episode represents both a precursor to great American outlaw legends such as Jesse James and Billy the Kid and an early landmark in Brattleboro publishing history.
Whether or not Dr. John Wilson was “Thunderbolt” remains an open question.
“While it's generally accepted as historical fact that the round schoolhouse in Brookline was built by a former highwayman, the actual details of the story remain uncorroborated, and the truth is that we'll probably never know,” Weed said.
Wilson is buried at the Prospect Hill Cemetery in Brattleboro.
Weed's recent collection of stories, A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, was a finalist in the short story category for both the 2018 American Fiction Awards and the 2017 International Book Awards.
“Tim Weed proves himself a skilled creator of a sense of place ... each story deposits one definitively into a geography, of mind and map,” according to The Boston Globe.