Contact Us

Drop us a line:

Welcome to the Thresher Pub

Where Fisher and Bird spin their yarns...

We adore criticism of all kinds, be it constructive, instructive, or just plain mean, and welcome all praise, rants, condemnations, and poison pen letters with an eye towards stealing whatever ideas we can from your contributions...

Mike: fisher@thresherpub.com Jim: bird@thresherpub.com or: info@thresherpub.com

We’d love to hear from you...

Meet our new literary discovery:

Ms. Edweena Cliffords

“I find writing to be so physically stimulating that I rarely need to buy batteries…Read Me!”

Or send me your email and I’ll Read You!

edweenacliffords@thresherpub.com

Text Box: March is Women’s History Month Our contribution to the body of knowledge that constitutes women’s history is to illuminate the story of Patty Cannon—a major figure among the brigands who infested the Maryland-Delaware border near the Nanticoke River in the early 1800’s. Patty’s most immediate claim to fame is that she was Delaware’s first serial killer. Beginning around 1808, Patty led a gang of cut-throats who kidnapped free blacks in Delaware and sold them into slavery down south. She was a physically imposing, jovial woman with thick black hair and it is said only one man in twenty was as strong as she. Patty was the bouncer in the tavern she ran with Joe Johnson, one of her gang members. Patty managed her criminal enterprises out of Johnson’s Tavern, the attic of which was converted to a windowless dungeon with thick oak walls. There the Cannon Gang’s victims were chained until they could be sold to slave traders from the South. The tavern and Patty’s house were adjacent to each other across the road which ran exactly on the Delaware/Maryland border, so that when authorities from either state approached she had but to step across the road to escape. Not content with her illicit slave trading profits, Patty often preyed upon the slave buyers she invited to bid upon her victims. Travelers who made the mistake of displaying too much wherewithal when they stopped to eat or lodge at the tavern sometimes met the same fate. The fields and woods surrounding Johnson’s Tavern were full of the hidden graves of her adult victims—she rid herself of cumbersome child captives by burning them in the tavern’s five fireplaces. Patty’s macabre world crashed in April 1829. A tenant farmer was plowing a field in Delaware owned by Patty Cannon when he unearthed a buried chest containing human remains. Indicted for murder, Patty Cannon cheated the hangman when she died in the Georgetown jail on May 11, 1829—the prevailing belief is that she had poison hidden upon her person when arrested and took her own life rather than face justice. Patty Cannon—one of the original women libbers.

Patty Cannon’s House

Johnson’s Tavern

Patty Cannon’s Skull