The Gentleman Highwayman of California--Black Bart

 

                                             Charles Boles a/k/a Charles Bolton, T. Z. Spaulding, and Black Bart after his arrest in San Francisco in 1883.

On July 23, 1878 the outlaw known as Black Bart robbed a Wells Fargo stagecoach.  Wells Fargo was a favorite target, and he was operating in the familiar territory in and around Calaveras County, California.  When the empty strongbox was found, it contained a little poem:

 

Here I lay me down to sleep

 

To wait the coming morrow,

Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,

And everlasting sorrow.

Let come what will, I’ll try it on,

My condition can't be worse;

And if there’s money in that box

‘Tis munny in my purse.

 

—Black Bart

PO8

The daring highwayman began his crime spree just shy of two years earlier on July 26, 1875.

It was the first of a string of daring hold-ups that would continue until he was finally captured following a botched robbery of the same stage in the same location in 1883.

Black Bart was one of the few Western bad men—or western lawmen for that matter—who lived up to his reputation.  Like others his adventures were exploited in dime novels and the popular press like the Police Gazette, but unlike others there was hardly any need for exaggeration.

Bart defied all of the stereotypes.   While stagecoach robberies were common across the West, most were done by mounted gangs who counted on their horses to outrun the law.   Deathly afraid of horses, Bart did all of his robberies and his successful getaways on foot taking advantage of the rugged territory of his preferred stage lines in northern California and southern Oregon.  He did not carry a pistol or a rifle.  He showed a shotgun which he never fired, and which may never even have been loaded.  He wore a raffish derby hat and long duster and disguised his face with a flour sack with eye holes.  He was unfailingly polite and courteous to drivers and passengers alike and never uttered a profanity.  On at least two occasions he left behind short poems celebrating his crimes. Yet he got away with tens of thousands of dollars of Wells Fargo gold and U.S. Mail in his long career.

 

Wells Fargo stagecoaches like this were Black Bart's favored target, perhaps because of some grievance committed by the coma.

If Bart’s appearance and methods were unorthodox, so was his background.  Born Charles Earl Bowles in Norfolk, England in 1829, his father relocated his large family to a Jefferson County, New York farm when he was two years old.

Like many a young man, he and two of his brothers were lured to the California gold fields in 1849. They worked claims along the stream then known as the American River in the heart of Gold Rush territory. After a discouraging year, Charley, as he was known returned east.  But the lure of gold got him again and returned with brothers David and Robert, who soon died of, probably of typhoid.  Charley continued mining with limited success until abandoning the fields in 1854

The same year Charley, now spelling his last name Boles, married Mary Elizabeth Johnson and established a home near Decatur, Illinois.  The couple soon had four children.

Whatever happiness the couple may have had was interrupted by the Civil War.   Boles enlisted in Company B, 116th Illinois Regiment, on August 13, 1862.  He was evidently an excellent soldier and quickly advanced through the ranks becoming First Sergeant by the end of his first year of service.  Boles saw action in many battles, including Vicksburg where he sustained major injuries.  Later he was a part of the Western Army under General William Tecumseh Sherman on his March to the Sea.  Boles was discharged having been brevetted to First Lieutenant in June 1865 in Washington and returned home.

Like many veterans, Boles found it difficult to adjust to the hum-drum of farming life.  In 1867 he lit out to Idaho and Montana to resume prospecting.  He remained in contact with his wife in Decatur until 1871.  A final letter in August of that year made cryptic reference to a grievance against Wells Fargo and a vow to seek vengeance.  He then stopped writing and seemed to vanish off the face of the Earth.  Eventually his wife gave him up for dead.

Nothing is known of his activities from that point on until that July day in California.  Perhaps he committed other, non-attributed robberies in Montana, honing his skills.  Perhaps he just went deep into the Northern California gold country once again prospecting and learning the lay of the land.  He evidently took his inspiration not from the dashing outlaw gangs of the plains but from the legendary solo highwaymen of his native England.

 

                                          

                                                              A cartoon imagining of a Black Bart ambush and robbery.

He typically hid behind an outcropping of rock or just beyond a curve, usually on an upgrade where the stagecoach teams would be laboring.  He calmly stepped into the road leveling his shot gun in the direction of the driver and politely asked for the strong box and mail.  He never robbed passengers or the driver.

Bart committed 28 holdups of Wells Fargo stagecoaches in Northern California, most of them on the Siskiyou Trail to Oregon.  On his fourth and seventh stick-ups Bart left behind poems. 

The first read:

 

I've labored long and hard for bread,

For honor, and for riches,
But on my corns too long you've tread,
You fine-haired sons of bitches,

—Black Bart, 1877

 

These ditties, along with the outlaw’s cheerful disposition sparked the interest and attention of the press and public alike.  After the second note, he was famous.  Almost any robbery on the west coast was attributed to him, some by copycats.  Most of his robberies were successful; some resulted in only a few dollars when an anticipated Wells Fargo shipment was not on board.  On one occasion he was scared off and lost his derby when a guard fired on him.  Possies chased him, but he melted into the mountains time and again.

                                            Wanted posters like this made Bart feel like a marked man.              

By the 1880s the pressure to capture him was building.  And Bart felt it.  He told a driver that year, “Hurry up the hounds.  It gets lonesome in these mountains.”  In 1882 a driver asked how much he made as an outlaw.   “Not very much for the chances I take,” he said.

On November 3, 1883 Bart returned to the site of his first robbery on Funk Hill in Calaveras County.  That day a young passenger got off the coach to hunt in the brush, planning to meet back up with it on the other side of the hill.  He got to the road and waited.  When the stage failed to appear, he began to walk back.  He met the driver with the team, which Bart had ordered un-hitched from the wagon.  Armed with the boy’s rifle the two moved back to the coach, where Bart was struggling to get the strong box un-bolted from the floor—a new Wells Fargo security measure.  The driver fired at Bart with the rifle and missed.  Bart took off, grabbing some gold and a sack of mail.  The boy took the rifle and thought he shot Bart as he disappeared into the trees.  They found traces of blood and began to follow.

Bart stashed his some of his loot in a hollow log, stuffed about $500 in gold coins into his pocket, and wrapped a bloody hand, his only wound, with a handkerchief.  He lost both the handkerchief and his glasses as he ran.  Still, he once again eluded his pursuers and seemed to make a clean get away.

Pinkerton Detectives hired by Wells Fargo recovered the items left behind.  The bloody handkerchief had a laundry mark on it.  Displaying the dogged diligence for which the Agency was famous, detectives visited more than 90 laundries before finding a matching laundry mark at Ferguson & Bigg’s California Laundry on Bush Street in San Francisco.  By co-incidence the detective, James B. Hume bore a remarkable resemblance to Bart with his massive handlebar moustache, bushy eyebrows and graying hair.  The laundry man pointed out Bart’s residence, a modest rooming house near-by.

Boles had evidently been living there for some years as T. Z. Spaulding.  He told the proprietors of the rooming house that he was a mining engineer.  His frequent business trips coincided with Bart’s robberies up north.

Boles’ true identity was only discovered when a Bible inscribed to him by his wife was found among his possessions.  Eventually, he confessed to robberies committed before 1879 in the mistaken belief that he could escape prosecution by the statute of limitations.  The police report described him as, “a person of great endurance. Exhibited genuine wit under most trying circumstances and was extremely proper and polite in behavior. Eschews profanity.”

News of Black Bart’s arrest and trial drew national attention.  Boles was photographed several times and illustrations appeared in national as well as California publications.

Wells Fargo chose only to prosecute for the first robbery, for which they had a firm confession.  Boles was sentenced to six years in San Quentin.  He served only four with time off for good behavior.  None-the-less, harsh prison conditions broke his health.

Upon his release, he wrote at last to his abandoned wife.  He told her he was being constantly followed by Wells Fargo agents and felt helplessly harassed.  He expressed a desire to “get away from everything.”

 

Bart continued to fascinate and inspired books, fictional and historic, stories, songs, a comic book and this 1948 highly fictionalized Universal B-movie starring Dan Durey, Yvone DeCarlo, and Jeffery Lynn.

In February 1888 Boles checked out of the San Francisco hotel where he was living.  Detectives traced him to the Palace Hotel in Visalia in the San Joaquin Valley far from Black Bart’s old stomping grounds.  He checked in and then just disappeared.  He was never seen or heard from again.

Later other robberies were attributed to Bart, including one in which a poem was left behind.  But Pinkertons proved that Boles was not involved.  Some stories had Boles retiring quietly to New York City under an assumed name where he may have died in 1917.  Others think he went back to prospecting in Montana or Nevada and probably died in the wilderness.

Whatever the case, the legend of Black Bart the Gentleman lived on.

St. Lou to Frisco in 25 Days or Less on the Overland Stage

 A Butterfield Overland Stage departing San Francisco in 1858.

On September 15, 1858 two new Concord Coaches, one in Saint Louis, Missouri and one in San Francisco, California set off in opposite directions two cross more than 2/3s of the continent.  They were inaugurating a new contract with the Post Office for transcontinental mail service operated by the Butterfield Overland Mail.  It would take 23 days for the California service to arrive at its eastern terminal—two whole days before its projected time.  The west bound route would make similar time.  Both traveled the indirect Ox bow route that dipped south to cross Indian Territory and kitty-angle across Texas before heading west along the Rio Grande River and through the rugged mountains and deserts of the New Mexico Territory.  It would actually clip a corner of Mexican Baja California before turning north traversing much of California via its central valley before finally reaching San Francisco Bay.

That route added almost 900 miles to a more northerly route via the Kansas and Nebraska Territories  past Ft. Laramie, through the South Pass, into Mormon Utah, across the punishing Nevada deserts, and over the fromitable Sierra Nevadas to California. 

When President James Buchanan ordered Post Master General Aaron Brown to establish an overland mail route to the West Coast in 1855 most people expected that the northern route would be picked.  It was already in use as the Oregon and California Trails by immigrant wagon trains and would later be followed by the Pony Express, the transcontinental telegraph, and eventually the transcendental railroad.  

                            John W. Butterfield was an upstate New York transportation tycoon when he bid on a transcontinental mail contract.

But John W. Butterfield, a 55 year old Utica, New York businessman had other ideas.  He was already an experienced operator of various transportation companies including regional stage coach lines in Upstate New York, plank roads, steam boats on Lake Ontario, ferries, and even his home town street railroad. 

When Butterfield heard about the upcoming mail contract, he determined to win it despite having no personal experience in the West.  And he knew just how to go about it—by exploiting the rising sectional tensions that were already straining the Union.

Tying gold rich California to the East was a high priority national objective.  Other than trusting a letter to and immigrant wagon train on a risky month’s long crawl across the continent, communications with the Golden State meant the long voyage all the way around Cape Horn by clipper ship.  Theoretically an overland mail service could drastically cut either time.  But Northern and Southern interests were at odds.  The South still had hopes of making California a slave state by referendum or failing that splitting the state and taking half.  It had similar objectives in expanding slavery into New Mexico Territory.  A northern route would tie San Francisco more tightly than ever to New York and New England banking and business interests who already dominated the ocean trade.

Butterfield proposed his southern route—more over a southern route that even avoided the well-established Santa Fe Trail which had its head in Bloody Kansas and was subject to the abolitionists who settled there.  He presented his bid to Post Master General Brown, a Tennessean and ardent Southern partisan.  

A map showing the West as it was in 1858 and Butterfield's Ox Bow southern mail routes.

Butterfield knew his man.  Brown announced that he would not entertain bids using the northern route because it was subject to being closed by snows.  It was a plausible excuse.  Certainly snow could and did close the immigrant trails on the high plains, the Rocky Mountains, and especially at Donner Pass over the Sierra Madres.  But as we will see the longer southern route posed its own dangers and even it could be closed by snow in the New Mexico mountains.  Since Butterfield was the only one to offer a bid on the Southern route, bingo, he was awarded the lucrative contract.

Although Butterfield was an experienced hand at stage lines, this was far bigger than anything he had ever attempted and required an enormous infusion of extra capital just to get off the ground.  He would need to supply 250 Concord Stagecoaches and 1800 horses and mules and find or build 139 relay stations.  In addition he would have to employ 800—almost all men but including some women cooks at relay stations.

For the necessary capital, Butterfield tuned to a number of partners and investors including William B. Dinsmore, William G. Fargo, James V. P. Gardner, Marcus L. Kinyon, Alexander Holland, and Hamilton Spencer.  All were eager to share in the proceeds of the $600,000 annual mail contract plus income from express freight and passengers. 

It was a near miracle that most of the infrastructure could be put in place from the official bid requests in March of 1857 to the mid-September 1858 effective starting date of the contract.  And that included shipping some of those Concord coaches from their New Hampshire manufacturer to San Francisco by sea.

                                      Reporter Waterman Ormsby.

New York Herald reporter Waterman L. Ormsby was the only passenger to ride the entire 2,812 mile journey from St. Louis to San Francisco.  Like other passengers who booked the entire trip, he paid a $200 fare—about $5,525 in today’s currency.  He described the experience succinctly, “Had I not just come out over the route, I would be perfectly willing to go back, but I now know what Hell is like. I’ve just had 24 days of it.” It was a bone jarring ride over rugged terrain exposing the passengers to blistering heat by day, sometimes freezing straw pallets on the floor or beds jammed with as many as six men. Food was often awful.  And passengers often had to help hitch and unhitch teams as well as switching luggage and freight between coaches.

The coach from the West Coast arrived at its destination with 6 passengers, some of whom were picked up along the way. 

Two coaches in each direction were scheduled each week of the contract.  There were actually two eastern terminals—St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee with the two routes converging at Fort Smith, Arkansas on the border of Indian Territory.  On the eastern legs depending on the weather and the navigability of rivers, mail might go part way by river boat down the Mississippi and then up the Arkansas River and might use rail service across part of Arkansas.  In dry weather the entire rout in eastern Arkansas might be made by coach.  From Fort Smith west, it was all coach service.

Almost immediately the dangers and drawbacks of the southern route became apparent.  The trip across notoriously violent Indian Territory exposed the coaches to Indian attacks, stock raids at way stations, and prowling outlaw gangs.  Even more dangerous was the transit of Texas which was subject to raids by the Comanche, Southern Pawnee, and Kiowa and the Apache in New Mexico.  On the long trip up central California there were more highwaymen.  The trips became so dangerous that Butterfield had to appeal for Army protection.

The tiny ante-bellum Regular Army was spread thinly across the West.  Much of it was stationed in Kansas trying to keep a lid on the virtual civil war between pro and anti-slavery forces. Shortly after taking office in 1860 the War Department assigned part of the 9th Cavalry based far to the north at Ft. Laramie under the command of Lt. Col. William O. Collins.  He detached troopers to escort coaches between Independence, Missouri and Sacramento, California.  This amounted to an effective subsidy of the service worth tens of thousands of dollars.

It was no surprise that the service was not profitable.  On top of that the newly formed Pony Express in 1860 offered faster service for the mails.  In March of that year Butterfeild’s partners foreclosed on him and ousted him from the business.  Eventually via William Fargo most of the company’s assets, like those of the short lived Pony Express, ended up under the control of the Wells Fargo Company.

A year later in March of 1861 the Congress cancelled the Overland Mail contract in anticipation of war breaking out, which it shortly did with the attack on Fort Sumter in April.  The last runs were on June 30, 1861.  A new northern route known as the Central Overland Pacific Route began service between St. Joseph, Missouri and Placerville, California.

Meanwhile George Henry Giddings tried to keep the old route open for the Confederacy between Texas and California.  The Rebel government was particularly hopeful that the coaches could supply California gold to their cash strapped Treasury. But California was soon firmly in Union hands and the Confederates destroyed stations west of Tucson.  Except for local service the southern overland service ceased in early 1862.

In California Wells Fargo continued to operate coach service to gold camps and expanded service to the silver mines in Nevada until railroad service rendered it obsolete in the late 1860’s.

Old Overland Stage stations were the sites of four Civil War battles—The Battle of Stanwix Station, the Battle of Picacho Pass, the Second Battle of Mesilla, and the Battle of Pea Ridge. They were also the sites of Confederate battles with the Comanche in Texas and Union fights with the Apache in New Mexico.

This Concord stage coach in service in the late 19th Century was pretty much identical to those operated on the Overland Mail route.

Stage coaches continued to serve shrinking routes in the West into the early 20th Century until they were all replaced by either railroads or motor coach service.

Wells Fargo kept getting richer and more powerful expanding to a vast express service and, of course, a fat bank.

 

A 1958 Overland Mail centennial commemorative First Class U.S. Postage stamp.

As for John Butterfield…his son Daniel became a Union General in the Civil War most famous for supposedly composing Taps.  The elder retired to Utica, served a term as Mayor and died much honored locally in 1869.  He was honored by the United State Postal Service by having Utica’s Butterfield Station Post Office named for him.