Sandy Flash

James Fitzpatrick (1748 – September 26, 1778), also known as Sandy Flash, was an American highwayman who operated in Chester and Delaware counties west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the American Revolutionary War. A Continental Army deserter, Fitzpatrick defected to the Loyalist side and entered folklore as a swashbuckling Robin Hood figure. He was popularized as a character named Sandy Flash in Bayard Taylor’s novel The Story of Kennett, published in 1866.

Early life Fitzpatrick was born in 1748 in the village of Doe Run in West Marlborough Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, the son of a working-class Scots-Irish immigrant. In his youth, he completed an apprenticeship with a local blacksmith, John Passmore, and then worked as a journeyman blacksmith and farmhand.

Capture and death On August 23, 1778, Fitzpatrick entered the Edgmont home of Robert McAfee, a militia captain, to rob him. McAfee and a servant girl, Rachel Walker, subdued the outlaw after a struggle. The Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania split the £1000 bounty between them. On September 15, Fitzpatrick was convicted of burglary and highway robbery, crimes to which he confessed, and was sentenced to be hanged. He attempted to escape from prison three times but failed.

Fitzpatrick's confederate, Mordecai Dougherty, was never captured and is thought to have fled to Canada. Tory sympathizers burned the haystacks and maimed the horses of his captor, Captain McAfee, who received £200 in compensation from the revolutionary government in 1783. These novels originated the epithet "Sandy Flash," by which Fitzpatrick has entered local folklore. Two Chester County roads have been named Sandy Flash Drive after Fitzpatrick, including the main road within Ridley Creek State Park, named in 1972, and another road located in a private housing estate in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

According to local legend, Fitzpatrick buried treasure ("enough to buy Chester County many times over") in a cave in the vicinity of Castle Rock, a rocky hill in the eastern part of Edgmont Township, Pennsylvania, near Crum Creek. No treasure was ever found.