Robert Spring

Robert Spring (1813–1876) was an English-born forger who forged letters from luminaries like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Horatio Nelson. Robert Spring was born in England but there is no information about his life prior to his emigration to the United States. He settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, around 1858 and became an antiquarian and bookseller. Sometime in the 1870s, Spring began to forge letters from historical people like Washington and Franklin. He used his own mixture of special ink on contemporary paper. At first, he used sheets of paper he had cut from the fronts or backs of old books. Spring created numerous forgeries of letters, payment orders and other papers with forged signatures of George Washington. He wrote the first payment orders on printed forms of the Office of Discount and Deposit at Baltimore. He made numerous copies of an autographed pass through American lines, issued with numerous different names - sometimes that of the intended buyer. Another common forgery was a supposed letter to one Jabez Huntington, a sheriff of Windham, Connecticut, that was an order to release a prisoner held in the county jail - with varying dates and names. He probably produced those to order in large quantities.