He never left. The dead man was said to have several vindictive brothers in Gibbsville, who had publicly sworn to avenge his death, and Moses Lockwood was urged to stay away from the county seat. He continued to postpone his departure, but his money was running low and he told his new friends that he had to find employment, which he was more likely to do in the larger town. He had made so favorable an impression in Swedish Haven that he was offered, and accepted, the post of roundsman. The pay was not much, but the borough provided lodging in the borough hall, and the Five Points Tavern fed him at the common table with its other guests. Moses Lockwood had no experience in police work, but he had proven himself courageous and cool in a crisis, and a dead shot with the pistol. He had accepted the job gratefully, but conditionally, it being understood that when a more attractive proposition came along, he would take it. In the next election he opposed the chief burgess, who, more than anyone else, had been influential in getting him the job. Moses Lockwood won the election on the single issue of economy; he could do the chief burgess’s job and be the roundsman for the chief burgess’s pay, plus fees. It had not escaped his notice that the office of chief burgess paid a miserably small salary, but that the fees were an attractive proposition, partly because his predecessor had made them so. As chief burgess, Moses Lockwood, following precedent, charged fees for all the customary services of notary public and justice of the peace, and now charged extra fees as rent collector, process server, and collector of delinquent taxes. He also raised court costs for hearings conducted in his office, which he pocketed, and for writing legal letters for citizens who felt they could not afford attorneys. He then married the younger daughter of the chief burgess, and Moses Lockwood and his father-in-law soon had a monopoly on real estate transactions, fire insurance, and borough government, alternating as chief burgess every second year. They established the first stage line between Swedish Haven and Richterville, eleven miles to the west, and they built a whiskey distillery on the river bank. They contracted to feed and house the workers on the new Philadelphia-Gibbsville canal, and when the work was finished, converted the barracks into two tenement blocks.
Moses Lockwood did not proceed unopposed, and in 1848, through a business quarrel, he shot and killed a second man. It was then brought out that he had not left Fort Penn of his own accord, and although his lawyer objected and the objection was sustained, Moses Lockwood was forced to listen as the district attorney attempted to show that the earlier fatal shooting of the sneak thief in the Five Points Tavern was in fact a deliberate murder. According to the district attorney, Moses Lockwood had known the thief and was planning a robbery in Gibbsville. The witness was one of the dead thief’s brothers, and Moses Lockwood’s attorney succeeded in having most of his testimony stricken from the record and discrediting most of what was allowed. Nevertheless the spectators in the courtroom were treated to the makings of a scandal.
The second fatal shooting, for which Moses Lockwood had to stand trial, took place in daylight on Dock Street, Swedish Haven. Calvin Lichtmann, a Richter Valley farmer, on whose farm Moses Lockwood and his father-in-law had threatened to foreclose a mortgage, was walking a few steps behind Lockwood on Dock Street, and carrying an old rifle. He called out a few words to Lockwood, who knew very little Pennsylvania Dutch. Lockwood turned, saw the rifle, drew his pistol and shot Lichtmann in the chest. Some Dutch-speaking pedestrians who heard the dying man’s words swore that he wondered aloud why Lockwood had shot him, that he had meant no harm. It developed that Lichtmann had brought the rifle to Swedish Haven for repairs to the firing-pin and had no intention of harming Lockwood. It was claimed for Lockwood that in the circumstances —the rifle, the threat of foreclosure, the suddenness of Lichtmann’s calling to him—he had reason to believe he was being attacked. Moses Lockwood was acquitted of manslaughter, but the judge, while finding no fault with the verdict, delivered himself of a few hundred sardonic words on the subject of men who go armed with a concealed weapon in the ordinary course of business. He then permitted Lockwood’s attorney to say, for the record, that Moses Lockwood was a peace officer as well as a business man, since he was also chief burgess of the thriving Nesquehela County community of Swedish Haven. “The court trusts,” said the judge, “that the peace-loving community of Swedish Haven will continue to thrive, and if the learned counsel has concluded, I declare this court now closed.” He rose and ignored Moses Lockwood’s outstretched hand.
Moses Lockwood was now thirty-seven years old, father of two daughters and a son, Abraham Lockwood. He did not again run for public office, and instead of soliciting business as had been his practice, he handled his affairs in a one-story, two-room building. He stayed in the back room, which opened on an alleyway. He kept the door key on his person at all times and as an extra precaution the door was bolted. From his desk he had a view of the front room and beyond it, through a large multi-paned window, of the passers-by. In spite of the judge’s remarks, he continued to go armed. He built another house; this one a square red brick dwelling in the center of an acre of ground, and all around the property he put up a brick wall, eight feet high, with spikes embedded along the top. It was said that the wall had cost more money than the house, and older citizens recalled that the original Swedish Haven settlement had been wiped out in an Eighteenth Century massacre by the Lenni Lenape tribe. Plainly, Moses Lockwood would be ready if the Indians ever came again. The most obtuse citizens could guess the reasons behind Moses Lockwood’s zeal for self-protection: the Bundy brothers, three in number, were only four miles away and they unanimously glowered at mention of the name Lockwood. The threat of a perjury charge against Josiah Bundy for his testimony in the Lockwood manslaughter trial had reactivated the brothers’ animosity, and citizens remarked that regardless of how much truth there was or was not in Josiah Bundy’s accusation, the brothers now firmly believed—or convincingly pretended to believe—that Moses Lockwood had lured their brother to his room and murdered him. They were violent men, ever in and out of trouble with the Gibbsville constables; and to give substance to Moses Lockwood’s story of the shooting of their brother was the family reputation for preying on drunken men. In so far as the Swedish Haven citizens were concerned, Moses Lockwood was given the benefit of the doubt; but a doubt had been created, and not everyone in the town believed that Moses Lockwood’s anxiety for safety emanated from a clear conscience.