Cowboys & Indians - Black Bart Traditional Cache

Found a spot to place one more cache in this series.

Cowboys & Indians is this years series. You will read about some famous and not so famous Cowboys & Indians. Hope you enjoy this years offerings.

Charles Earl Bowles (b. 1829; d.after 1888), better known as Black Bart, was an English-born American Old West outlaw noted for the poetic messages he left behind after two of his robberies. Called Charley by his friends, he was also known as Charles Bolton, C.E. Bolton and Black Bart the Poet. Considered a gentleman bandit, he was one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers to operate in and around Northern California and southern Oregon during the 1870s and 1880s.

Black Bart had a reputation for style and sophistication.

Early life

Charles Bowles was born in Norfolk, England, to John and Maria Bowles, or Bolles. He was one of 10 children: seven boys and three girls. When Charles was two years old, his parents emigrated to Jefferson County, New York. His father, John Bowles, purchased a farm in the area, four miles north of Plessis Village in the direction of Alexandria Bay.

Criminal career

Bowles, as Black Bart, perpetrated 28 robberies of Wells Fargo stagecoaches across northern California between 1875 and 1883,including a number of robberies along the historic Siskiyou Trail between California and Oregon. Although he only left two poems, at the fourth and fifth robbery sites, this came to be considered his signature and ensured his fame. Black Bart was very successful, making off with thousands of dollars a year.

Bowles was terrified of horses and committed all of his robberies on foot. This, together with his poems, earned him notoriety. Through all his years as a highwayman, he never fired a gun.

Bowles was always courteous and used no foul language in speech, although this aversion to profanity is not evident in his poems.. He wore a long linen duster coat and a bowler hat. He covered his head using a flour sack with holes cut for the eyes and he brandished a shotgun. These distinguishing features became his trademarks.

First robbery

On 26 July 1875, Bowles robbed his first stagecoach in Calaveras County, on the road between Copperopolis and Milton. What made the crime unusual was the politeness and good manners of the outlaw. He spoke with a deep and resonant tone and told John Shine, the stagecoach driver, "Please throw down the box." As Shine handed the strongbox, Bowles shouted, "If he dares to shoot, give him a solid volley, boys". Rifle barrels pointed at Shine from the nearby bushes, so he handed over the strongbox.

Shine waited until Bowles vanished and then went back to get the plundered box. Upon returning to the scene, he found that the men with rifles in the bushes were actually carefully rigged sticks.

This first robbery netted Bowles $160.

Last stagecoach robbery

The last holdup took place at the site, fittingly enough, of his first holdup, on Funk Hill, just southeast of the present town of Copperopolis. The stage had crossed the Reynolds Ferry on the old stage road from Sonora to Milton. The stage driver was Reason McConnell. At the ferry crossing, the driver picked up Jimmy Rolleri, the 19-year-old son of the ferry owner. The stage had to travel up a steep road on the east side of Funk Hill. Jimmy Rolleri had brought his rifle and got off at the bottom of the hill, intending to hunt along the creek at the southern base of the hill and then meet the stage at the bottom of the western grade. However, on arriving at the western side of the hill, he found that the stage was not there. He began walking up the stage road and, on nearing the summit, he encountered the stage driver and his team of horses.

Rolleri learned that as the stage had approached the summit, Bowles had stepped out from behind a rock with his shotgun. Bowles made McConnell unhitch the team and return with them over the crest again to the west side of the hill, where Rolleri encountered him. Bowles then tried to remove the strongbox from the stage. Wells Fargo had bolted the strongbox to the floor inside the stage (which had no passengers that day). It took Bowles some time to remove the box.

McConnell informed Rolleri that a holdup was in progress, and Rolleri came up to where McConnell and the horses were standing. He saw Bowles backing out of the stage with the box. McConnell took Rolleri's rifle and fired at Bowles twice as he started to run away. He missed. Jimmy took the rifle and fired just as Bowles was entering a thicket. They saw him stumble as the bullet found its mark. Running to where they had last seen the robber, they found a bundle of mail he had dropped, and scattered further on was more mail, which had blood on it. Bowles had been shot in the hand. After running about a quarter of a mile Bowles stopped, too tired to run any farther. He wrapped a handkerchief around the wound to help stop the bleeding. Bowles found a rotten log and stuffed the sack with the gold amalgam into it. He kept the $500 in gold coins. Bowles buried the shotgun in a hollow tree but threw away everything else, except what he needed to get by, and escaped.

It should be noted that there is a manuscript written some 20 years after the robbery by stage driver Reason McConnell in which McConnell says that he fired all four shots at Bowles. The first was a misfire, he thought the second or third shot hit Bowles, and he knew that the fourth one hit him. Bowles only had the wound to his hand, and if the other shots hit his clothing, Bart was unaware of it.

Investigation and arrest

During his last robbery in 1883, when Bowles was wounded and forced to flee the scene, he left behind several personal items, including a pair of eyeglasses, food, and a handkerchief with a laundry mark F.X.O.7. Wells Fargo Detective James B. Hume (who allegedly looked enough like Bowles to be a twin brother, moustache included) found these several personal items at the scene. He and Wells Fargo detective Henry Nicholson Morse contacted every laundry in San Francisco, seeking the one that used the mark. After visiting nearly 90 laundry operators, they finally traced the mark to Ferguson & Bigg's California Laundry on Bush Street. They were able to identify the handkerchief as belonging to Bowles, who lived in a modest boarding house.

Bowles described himself as a "mining engineer" and made frequent "business trips" that happened to coincide with the Wells Fargo robberies. After initially denying he was Black Bart, Bowles eventually admitted that he had robbed several Wells Fargo stages but confessed only to the crimes committed before 1879. It is widely believed that Bowles mistakenly believed that the statute of limitations had expired on these robberies. When booked, he gave his name as T.Z. Spalding. When the police examined his possessions they found a Bible, a gift from his wife, inscribed with his real name.

The police report following his arrest stated that Bowles was "a person of great endurance. Exhibited genuine wit under most trying circumstances, and was extremely proper and polite in behavior. Eschews profanity."

Conviction and imprisonment

Wells Fargo pressed charges only on the final robbery. Bowles was convicted and sentenced to six years in San Quentin Prison, but his stay was shortened to four years for good behavior. When he was released in January 1888, his health had clearly deteriorated owing to his time in prison. He had visibly aged, his eyesight was failing, and he had gone deaf in one ear. Reporters swarmed around him when he was released and asked if he was going to rob any more stagecoaches. "No, gentlemen," he replied, smiling, "I'm through with crime." Another reporter asked if he would write more poetry. Bowles laughed and said, "Now, didn't you hear me say that I am through with crime?"

Final days

Black Bart's end is in keeping with the way the romantics of his day would have had it. Bowles never returned to his wife, Mary, in Hannibal, Missouri, after his release from prison. However, he did write to her after his release. In one of the letters he said he was tired of being shadowed by Wells Fargo, felt demoralized, and wanted to get away from everybody. In February 1888 Bowles left the Nevada House and vanished. Hume said Wells Fargo tracked him to the Palace Hotel in Visalia. The hotel owner said a man answering the description of Bart checked in and then disappeared. The last time the outlaw was seen was February 28, 1888.

Verses

Bowles, like many of his contemporaries, read "dime novel"–style serial adventure stories which appeared in local newspapers. In the early 1870s, the Sacramento Union ran a story called The Case of Summerfield by Caxton (a pseudonym of William Henry Rhodes). In the story, the villain dressed in black and had long unruly black hair, a large black beard, and wild grey eyes. The villain robbed Wells Fargo stagecoaches and brought great fear into those who were unlucky enough to cross him. The character's name was Black Bart.

Bowles may have read the Sacramento Union story. He told a Wells Fargo detective that the name popped into his head when he was writing the first poem and he used it.

Bowles left only two authenticated verses. The first was at the scene of the August 3, 1877, holdup on a stage traveling from Point Arena to Duncan's Mills:

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

The second verse was left at the site of his July 25, 1878, holdup of a stage traveling from Quincy to Oroville. It read:

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