JOHN P. “FRANK” SHOLEY
It is difficult to determine who this person actually was and what was his real name. Has been variously reported as F. B. Sholey, Frank Sholey, John Sholey, John P. Sholey, F. B. Straley, Frank R. Scholey, F. Shover, J. Shover, and “Sikes” Shover. Did he live in Elizabethville where Keiper and Rowe reportedly contracted the wagon they used to drive to Halifax? Of was he a liveryman in Lykens as one story suggests? . Did he accompany Keiper and Rowe to Halifax, or did they go alone? It is possible he got a much lighter sentence because he provided evidence for the state, evidence which helped convict Keiper and Rowe of murder in the first degree.
The newspapers reported that for his part in the robbery – supposedly an accomplice before the fact – he was sentenced to ten years in the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. This sentence may have been shortened through parole because John Sholey appears at a boarding house in Lykens in the 1910 census. He was then working as a coal miner. By 1920 he had moved to Tower City, Schuylkill County, had married, and had a young son, but he was still working as a coal miner. Then he disappears completely. However, his death and burial information have been located in Pennsylvania Death Certificates; he died at Lykens on January 1, 1948, of myocardial degeneration.
The earliest information on John Sholey is that he was the son of Polish immigrants and that his father came to America to work in the mines.
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First published on the Civil War Blog, November 10, 2011.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.