It should be noted that he also wrote a play titled “The Housier Schoolmaster,” which the Troy YMCA performed in 1876 in what was then the Scharble Jewelry Store Building on South Market Street.
 

   His fame and money came from his novels. He was one of several writers of the Nick Carter series of stories published by Beadle and Adams of New York. A man named John Coryell created the character Nick Carter. It is believed that at some time Coryell either gave or sold the right to use the character to Harbaugh and writer Frederick Van Renesselaer Dey. 
 

   Harbaugh frequently wrote using a pen name, including: Captain Hamilton Holmes, Captain Howard Lincoln, Charles Howard, and Major S.S. Scott.
 

   Young boys loved his stories, but adults harshly criticized them. 
 

   In 1878 a Harbaugh western with a character named Dandy Jack appeared in a publication named the Saturday Journal. His hometown newspaper gave harsh criticism to the story and wrote: “T.C. Harbaugh has published another cheap novel entitled Dandy Jack, or The Outlaw of the Oregon Trail. We are proud of T.C. Harbaugh as a poet of our own but we regret exceedingly that he should add in anyway to the already overloaded market of cheap and trashy literature. It is ruining our boys and girls.” In response, Harbaugh wrote a poem titled “My Pen

and I.” 
 

   This may be his most well-known poem, since it seems to be printed in almost all biographical sketches about him. It reads: 

​

Come here old fellow from the rack,
And while we chat together,
I’ll toast my feet before the grate
For this is frosty weather.
We’ll not write any more today
On madrigal or story
But let the critics have their way
And starve to death on glory.
~
You’ve turned the whole world upside down
From mansion sir to hovel;
You’ve gone and written what is called “A cheap and trashy novel.”
Against you, for this 
monstrous crime,
The holy ones are crying;
“O’er all the land, with moral rot
The boys and girls are dying.”

​

   The late Leonard U. Hill, local historian and writer for the Piqua Daily Call, wrote: “From 1873 to 1896 at least scores and perhaps hundreds of Harbaugh’s thrillers appeared in (publisher) Beadle and Adams Half Dime Library in New York City. It was printed each week in newspaper style, 16 pages, 8 x 11 inches, and sold for a nickel. There were other contributors besides Harbaugh but he furnished his share.”  

   A Harbaugh biography in the work “Ohio Authors and Their Books” indicates that he: “wrote at least 125 novels for various Beadle series…”  Another source says that he may have written as many as 650 nickel novels, and that he once claimed to have written a 150,000 word book in two weeks. Harbaugh was known as a man who could write “with his feet as well as either hand.”
 

   Aside from being called “half-dime” books, these books were also known as “nickel novels,” “penny dreadfuls” (because writers received one penny per word for their work), or “yellowbacks.”  
 

   There is evidence that although Harbaugh wrote many such stories, he was not proud of them. He wrote them to make a living. 
 

   Harbaugh never married. He lived in Casstown with his bachelor brother Samuel, who was the Casstown Village Recorder, a taxidermist and paper hanger. The 1890 book Local and National Poets of America says, “Mr. Harbaugh devotes the whole of his time to literature, working in his study for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon; and in his leisure hours he strolls around the fields and glens surrounding Casstown, Ohio—very often with rod and gun.”
 

   He also traveled to many sites where his characters lived, including many Civil War battlefields. He claimed to have an autograph of every general of the Civil War.
 

   Harbaugh seems to have had a good life until his brother Samuel died in 1922. Then things went downhill. Samuel Harbaugh had apparently done much of the work to maintain their home. After his death, Thomas just couldn’t keep things in order. He tried to find a housekeeper to help maintain both he and his house but never was able to do so. One Harbaugh acquaintance remarked about his dirty appearance by saying, “Flies would commit suicide by landing on Tommy’s vest.”  
 

   Writer Leonard Hill once wrote that Harbaugh “became afflicted with partial paralysis” following his brother’s death. The paralysis may have contributed to his lack of cleanliness.
 

   It was decided that Harbaugh should return to Maryland. His fortune had greatly diminished. 
 

   An estate that had been valued between $20,000 and $30,000 (probably around 1910) had diminished to $2,000 by the early 1920s.  
 

   An old clipping from a publication named the “Pathfinder” says: “Thomas C. Harbaugh, author of 650 dime and nickel novels for the most part concerning poor boys who by dint of hard work and pluck became rich, recently began the closing chapter of life by entering the Miami County poorhouse, an old and broken man. A few hours before he had seen an auctioneer dispose of his few worldly possessions to a pitifully small crowd of curious country people at Casstown, the small village where he evolved plots for many of his stories.
 

   The sale netted about $1,000, enough to keep Harbaugh in the poorhouse the rest of his life. In an autograph album which sold for $60 was a letter from Mark Twain to Gov. Fuller of N.Y. dated 1870.  Personal letters from Lincoln, Roosevelt and other celebrities including every Union and Confederate general who survived the Civil War, brought equally small sums.”
 

   Two Maryland boyhood friends arranged for Harbaugh to return to Maryland to live out his life. They were Maryland State Welfare Director Emery L. Coblentz and George C. Rohoderick. Through their efforts, he went to the Montevue (Monteview) Hospital near Frederick, MD, which was the county “poorhouse.”  A Maryland newspaper wrote of his return there: “Tom Harbaugh, writer of dime and five-cent novels of adventure, intrigue, the wild west, frontier days and hair-raisers has come home to die; has come from Casstown, Ohio, the town which knew him at the height of his literary fame, to spend his remaining days in the county of his birth, Frederick county.”
 

   The article further says: “The eyes of the weaver of stories that enthralled millions grew misty and dim when he told of the passing of some of his treasure in Casstown, Ohio, a few months ago, when he disposed of all his personal property and went to the Casstown poorhouse. These possessions included autograph letters sent to him by the then reigning queens of Holland, England, Spain and Italy, thanking him for poetic tribute. They brought him $65 at the auction.”
 

   Harbaugh lamented about his condition in the article saying, “… my writing days are gone. I often feel like doing it again, and think out plots, but I can’t dictate. I have to write it myself. My mind travels too fast. But, but—he mused—I might try it again some day—who knows.”