The Hot Springs star. (Hot Spings [Hot Springs], Dakota [Dakota Territory, i.e. S.D.]) 1886-189?, 1889-08-09
A DAKOTA METEOR.
THE BRILLIANT GEN. A. IL. WARD
AND HIS cHEckERED CAREER.
A Man of Many Wives and AZ Many Names
His Latest Escapade-Dakota's Ar
trs.an District-OtlAer News About the
Territory.
A Remarkably, Career of y,,,a,nv.

4GHbhtObys
A Remarkable Career of villainy.
The New York World hos been unearth-
ing the career of Gen. A. b. Ward, late
of Grand Forks, North Dakota, whose un-
savory record in that city caused the
greatest sensation both in the political and
social circle of the young territory. . The
general arrived in New York shortly after
his disappearance from Grand Forks and
commenced to perpetrate his dead beating
acts upon all the fish that come to his
net" as he Termed his conquests. He sue
ceeded in worming himself into the good
grnces of the household of John j..
Plunkett and wife, who conducted the
Christiun Science Monthly. After getting
MIR. Plunkett thoroughly under his
influence he pnid particular attention
to his wife and in the short time of q
month she was ready to desert her
husband. He wen under the name of A.
Bentley Worthington. Mrs. Plunkett de-
cided that life was not worth living with
my n else. The peculiar manner in
which Mr.. and MIS-. Plunkett declared
themselves divorced, and the equally in-
formal way in which Worthington and Mrs.
Plunkett subsequently declared themselves
married, We're enlarged upon at the time it
occurred. When Investigation revealed
the true identity of the man, he disap-
peared, as usual, first a%cknowled-
or eX-Mrs. Plunkctt, still does, that
he has been i'll one person, and ut
different times Samuel Oakley Crawford,
Eugene Samuel Bowler Walton, Maj.
Eugene Bowler, Eugene Bonner, Il. 7.
Bannerton, Nj. B%ennateau, Ma .s%iIiorncc
Oakley Wood, Arthur Wood, VI. ID. Wood,
Arlington Buckingham Wadsworth, Gen"
A. b. Ward, aud lastly A. Bentley Wor-
thington. Under each alias he has sue
ceeded III acquiring IL new wife in one way
OF another.
- =. His whole history reads like a romance,
md it was ut first hard to believe that
there could be IL person i'll this world with
SO little heart. For over twenty years he
has succeeded i'll betraying innocent women
and robbing them of their money. sparing
neither orphans nor widows. He skipped
from Grand Forks, OAK, last January,
after forging his law partners signature,
n leaving II young wife, who is now III IL
charitable institution in st. Paul, Mimi,
where She is about TO become u mother.
He has succeeded i'll avoiding arrest ut
nearly every place where lie has resided.
As nearly rs can be ascertained. which
is not any too nearly, the fellows real
name is Samuel Oakley Crawford, and he
was born i'll Saugerties about 1913. Craw-
ford served a little while i'll the army
during the war, and also studied law in
Saugerties, n. y. Afterward he was n
Methodist preacher somewhere i'll New
Jersey and an insurance agent in Pennsyl-
vania, finally turning up in Albany, where
he married a telegraph operator, who is
supposed to have been his first wife. Some
crookedness, the nature OF which is now
unknown, got him sentenced to three
years imprisonment, and after serving IL
part of the time he got a pardon through
friends and Won west. Along i'll 1878 he
turned up in Toronto playing i'll the Helen
Blythe Dramatic company unde the name
of Eugene Benneteau, but giving Eugene
Bannerton as his real name. December
9th, 1878 he married there II pretty act
ress. who is now i'll New York un .er the
name of Hudson. III is said the young
couple retired from the stage and went to
live at New Lisbon, Wis. where BANNER
ton practiccd law and got trusted. When
his credit ran low he is said to have
forged some checks and notes and WAS ar
rested but released on the bail furnished
by his law partner, who trusted him i'm
plicitlv. A few days later he disappeared.
His wife returned to New York, and was
stillinfatuated enough to devote her earn
ings for n long time to paying off the
debts of her husband, which she did i'll
full. She afterwards procured II divorce
on the ground of desertion.
In 1885 the fellow had adopted his pre-
sumably real name, and as $. q. Crawford,
L., A.~ ,~-.n. ,l..... 1N .-.a
resented as his sisters. lie leased II fine es-
tate near Charleston, w. N.l.and set up as
u man of wealth retired from business to
recuperatc his health. In 1856, having got
changed somehow into Judge John ID.
Crawford. he met j. L. DAM, IL big Goa
operator interested in marketing n large
tract of timber land. Crawford cume will
his two Sisters" to New York, and wrote
to MIR. Dana that he had made the sale.
He ntteward showed what purporte1 to be
II contract for the sale, and Mr.. Dana gave
him money to buy off a Washington mar
who held an option ON the tract. Craw.
and at once got $ 5000 moro to buy out the
interest of a man i'll Nebraska. That was
the last Mr.. Dana saw of him or of the
money. Crawford afterward lived at Dor
chester, Mass, with the two women, who
were Mrs. Sargent and Louise Jenkins.
He had promised to marry Mrs. Sargent us
soon as he could get n divorce. She sup
ported him for II year on the strength of
the promise and a forged paper tina lie told
her was a divorce. lie got 81, 900 from he,
besides the years keeping and fled.
From West Virginia he went to Griffin,
Ga, where he called himself Maj. Horace
Oakley Wood, and made violent love to
Miss Lizzie Hill, daughter of n wealthy
citizen. He married August 81. 1856, and
a large piece of real estate was the wedding
present from the BRIDES. fa her. In the
spring of 1887 Wood announced that he
was going to start a bank. He got $4,000
out of a man who wants | to be cashier,
$4,000 from another q aud $4,000
from others. Then he made his wife &c
to Atlanta and get some relatives to casl
a check for $4,000 to which lie had forged
his fa~ther-in-law's Endorsement. With
the $4,000 he disappeared, leaving n wife
infatuated enough to refuse almost to this
day to believe that he was a sc%oundrcl.
In August. 1887, he popped up at Spo-
kane Falls, w. H.. where Us Arlington
Buckingham Wadsworth he presented let
tiers of introduction from somc of the
best known men in the country, and
claimed to be i'll control of vast capital,
He was getting up II gigantic banking
scheme for the western territories, when,
in October, 1887, his swindlin9 propensi-
ties got him into trouble an he fled.
He seems to have gone Immediately To
Providence, II. l., and as Arthur B. Ward
lie met Emma Perry, M accom-
plished young woman. daughter of we'll
known residents of Providence, and worth
41Sn On0 whin1, was nhOrf IN Gonna ,pfc