Colonel Plug
Walter Catlett, who played Plug in Davy Crockett and the River Pirates
Colonel Fludger was born in Rockingham County, New Hampshire. At a young age he gained a slight of hand at cards and an intsinct on anything from watches to horses. At age fourteen, he could beat up any boy his own age. At age eighteen, he was a favorite at the fair. At twenty-four, he was a colonel in the militia. He was soon thrown in jail, for want of someone to bail him out for twenty dollars. On his release, he abondonned his country and went west, to Ohio.
In Pittsburgh, Ohio, he hired a contractor to build him a flatboat and tried to pay the man in rum. It is unknown whether his effort worked, he did get the boat. There in Pittsburgh, he was deamed attractive. Kentucky broad-horns were, in those days, the only ones who traveled the northern Ohio River. These people preyed on pioneers. They would lure them into shore and cheap them out of their goods at gambling, or give them false directions from shore and watch them run aground and pillage the abandonned vessel. If these tactics failed, they waded out into the river at night, and drilled holes in their boats, and then picked up the floatsam; hopefully something of value. Fludger liked these people. He soon became the Napoleon of them all.
Fludger shortened his family name to Plug, because he simply liked the shortness of it. Plug had a crew of his own hand-picked raiders. They would row up and down the river. Not one warehouse between Louisville, Kentucky and Cash, Arkansas was safe.
Plug and his crew came across a group of French traders, who just passing by. The French, however, had seen him before he had seen them, so they had escaped. However, they had left one lady behind while she was collecting pawpaws. Plug's crew found her, of copper complexion and tall height. She must of had at least three races in her blood- African, white, and American Indian. She and Plug fell in love, and, for this, she became known as Pluggy. In a few months, Pluggy was as infamous as Plug. A young Plug was born a while after. Years after the young Plug was born, Pluggy was found cheating on Plug with his second in command, known as Nine-Eyes. After a drinking contest, Plug forgave Nine-Eyes and Pluggy.One night, Plug and crew raided a camp of three Kentuckians. The Kentuckians raided the raiders back, and won. Plug's crew abandonned him. The three men tied up Plug to a tree and began to flog him, cleaving shirt and flesh from his back. When Pluggy found out, she, and the two young Plugs, went after him and found him. After Pluggy yelled at him for being dumb, she cut him loose.
Some time later, Plug happened to find a boat whose crew was out hunting turkey. He climbed
aboard and began to dig out it's culking. A squall came up the river, and dragged the boat to deeper water, with Plug on it. The boat sank. Plug grabbed ahold of a barrel of rum, resistance was futile, and so past the last of the boat wreckers. 
Plug has also resurfaced in more recent years in our pop culture and media.
In 1956, Plug was featured in Dinsey's Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, played by Walter Catlett. In September 2000, a flatboat was discovered near Mound City, Ohio. It is beleived that it may be one of Plug's victims. This site created by Jon Lamphere, October 3, 2006
Sources
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