Note 22 — Mason—Soldier, Pirate, Highwayman

In her account to Draper Mrs. Anthony states that in addition to Henry Havard, Samuel Mason had, besides his own family, at least two other accomplices while living near Henderson: Nicholas Welsh and a man named Hewitt. Henry Havard, after the assassination of Captain John Dunn, fled to his father’s home on Red River, Tennessee. The regulators there, upon hearing that he had been employed by Mason to kill Dunn, “raised and went to old Havard’s, found Henry hid between two feather beds and shot through the beds. They made the old man pull out the body of his son and when they found his brains were oozing out they knew he was quite dead.” Hewitt was captured on the Kentucky shore opposite Diamond Island, by regulators who were “strongly inclined to kill him, but finally refrained, but made him break his gun.” Nicholas Welsh, who ran the tavern in which Mason and his men made their headquarters when in Red Banks, disappeared immediately after Captain John Dunn was shot, and was never again heard of.