I received this email from a friend in St. Mary's County, Maryland. This Wise is not related to me from what I can tell but maybe someone on the lists. The St. Mary's Beacon was the local newspaper for St. Mary's County, MD. Joan Wise Rogers "Found the following in St Mary's Beacon 11 October 1894. This guy related to you????" The Passing of Wise On the night of Friday, October 5th, 1894, Levi J. [Joshua Watts] Wise, convicted of an assault upon William E. Goddard with intend to kill and sentenced to the penitentiary for four years, made his escape from the St. Mary's county jail by utting the iron bars of his cell window. Wise was confined in the south-west cell and the window through which he passed fronts the Clerk's Office. The bars are of malleable iron, one inch in diameter. Seveteen and a half inches of one bar was cut out and another was cut off at the bottom and forced out of position thus making an opening sufficiently large for a good sized man to pass through. The work was skillfully done and shows the possession of suitable tools. The cell is on the second floor and the escaping prisoner lowered himself to the ground by means of a sheet wrapped around one of the window bars. After Wise reached the ground he pulled the sheet after him and, carrying it about fifteen yards, hung it upon the fence. The position of the sheet would seem to indicate that he went towards the bay and escaped by water. The statements of residents of California, however, apparently dispose of this theory, for they assert that he went home and taking a horse and road-cart from his stable drove up the county. We are also informed that the Sheriff was told by Mrs. Wise that her husband came home on the night of his escape. Saturday was the day set by the Sheriff to take his prisoners to their destinations and when the jailor closed up Friday evening all of them were in place and everything was apparently all right. Wise's escape was not detected until Saturday morning about 8 o'clock. In his cell he left two papers one endorsed, "Last Will; for publication;" and the other, the following doggerel in which he lampoons the Court and its officers: I will bid farewell to every shame I will rid myself of a dirty Crane I will wipe my weeping eyes, I will wipe my weeping eyes. I will bid farewell to every crook I will rid myself of that old Brook I will wipe my weeping eyes, &c. I will bid farewell to every foe I will rid myself of that Briscoe I will wipe my weeping eyes, &c. I will bid farewell to every fear I will rid myself of the Camalier I will wipe my weeping eyes, &c. I will get out of here the sand I'll sift I will rid myself of the sheriff I will wipe my weeping eyes, &c. I with my friends will have to part I will make new ones from the start I will wipe my weeping eye, &c. I no one will try to deceive I my children hate to leave I will wipe my weeping eye,&c. In his "last will" which has been misplaced by some reader, Mr.Wise says: "I am conscientiously committing the greatest crime of my life in breaking prison, but the Court, though which I consider it poor authority, decided in the Higg's case that it was no crime to breal out of a house, so, I go upon the world with a pure and contrite heart leaving my darling children to the mercy of this wicked world" &c. He also remembers the States Attorney in his will and concludes with the statement that his last signature in his mother county is penned "without the consent of his Excellency the Governor of Maryland. St Mary's Beacon, 11 October 1894 Peter Himmelheber http://www.emainc.com/radnor