Black Bart, the Bane of Wells Fargo Stagecoach Company

It seems like it’s a universal experience over Christmas in America to watch at least a few minutes of the movie, A Christmas Story. Ralphy wants a Red Ryder bb gun and has heroic fantasies about taking out the villain, Black Bart. Did you know that Black Bart was a real outlaw, though? I sure didn’t! I started digging into this and I finally have the episode ready for you! You can find all my references at the end of this blog post. Please remember I’m just a girl on the internet, I wasn’t actually there, this is just a little boondoggle to see what history says about this man. I have been wanting to start this podcast for two years now so I’m finally doing it and I guess I will figure out exactly how to go about this while in the middle of it!

Black Bart was a "gentleman bandit" highwayman who left poetry behind after a couple of his robberies, which made him famous. He was active in northern California and southern Oregon as a stagecoach robber, having a reputation for style, politeness, and sophistication. His real name was Charles E. Boles, often called Charles Bolton or Charley by his friends. He was active in the 1870s through the 1880s.

He was born in Norfolk, England, around 1829 as the third of ten children, and his family immigrated to Jefferson County, New York when he was two years old. When he was about 20 years old in 1849, he and his brother James jumped in on the California gold rush. They prospected in the north fork of the American River near Sacramento but didn't have much success. The brothers returned to New York in 1852. He eventually convinced two more of his six brothers to go back to California; these brothers were named David and Robert. Unfortunately, both brothers fell ill shortly after arriving and died. Charles remained in California for another two years before giving up on his gold-hunting endeavor and returning home to New York. He married Mary Elizabeth Johnson in 1854, and by 1860, they lived in Decatur, Illinois, and had 4 children.

Charles fought in the Civil War, enlisting in August 1862 and becoming a first sergeant within a year. He was part of Sherman's March to the Sea and was seriously wounded at the Battle of Vicksburg.

I won't go into extensive detail, but I do want to give a little overview of these two parts of the Civil War because I didn't know what they were until I started researching for this episode, and I'm guessing that maybe you don't know either. These campaigns were directed by General William Tecumseh Sherman in conjunction with commanding general (and later US president) Ulysses S. Grant.

The battle of Vicksburg, or the Vicksburg campaign, was directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, which was, according to Wikipedia, a "fortress city" that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi River. Under General Ulysses S Grant, the Union army gained control of the Mississippi River by capturing Vicksburg. This required naval maneuvers on the river along with ground forces. The campaign comprised eleven battles between December 26, 1862, and July 4, 1863. Vicksburg was surrendered on July 4, one day after the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg. This victory effectively cut off Texas and Arkansas from the Confederacy. It opened the Mississippi River for use as a Union supply line. This was a significant turning point in the war, and where Charles was seriously wounded. I couldn't find what happened to him, just that he was seriously injured, but clearly, he recovered in time to continue on into Sherman's march to the sea in November. Then, the Meridian campaign took place in February / March of 1864, I couldn't find information to confirm he was involved, but Sherman's troops were involved in this campaign. Three railroads intersected in the town, and it was a crucial hub for Confederate agricultural products. The Confederacy had a limited iron supply and few foundries, so Sherman ordered his men to destroy the rails to cut off supply lines. Rails that were only bent could be salvaged and put back into shape, so the men were told to heat the rails up and twist them out of line to prevent salvage. The most efficient way to render the rails unusable was to twist the red-hot rail around a tree far enough that the ends crossed over each other, and the rails were left around the trees. These became known as Sherman's neckties. Sherman's men so effectively sabotaged these railroad lines that they were rendered useless for 26 days, critically crippling the Confederate supply lines.

Then came the Atlanta Campaign in the summer of 1864, a series of battles fought through northwest Georgia against the Confederate army. Led by Confederate General Joseph E Johnston, the Army of Tennessee faced successive flanking maneuvers by Sherman's armies and was forced to withdraw into Atlanta. Johnston was replaced with a more aggressive general, John Bell Hood, but Sherman's forces besieged his army in Atlanta, and the city fell to the Union on September 2, 1864. This set the stage for the strategic work that was done by Union armies deep in Confederate territory to disrupt supply lines, ruin Confederate morale, and break the Confederacy's strategy.

Sherman's March to the Sea, also known as Sherman's March or the Savannah Campaign, took place from November 15 to December 21 of 1864, leaving from Atlanta, Georgia, and concluding with the conquer of Savannah. Union supply lines did not supply troops; instead, food was seized from local farms when their 20 days of rations ran out. The army was out of touch with the Union throughout the campaign. It implemented a "scorched earth" strategy: destroy railroads as was done in the Meridian campaign, destroy manufacturing and agricultural infrastructure, and demoralize civilians by supplying the troops with any livestock or crops seized along their route, planned carefully by Sherman using livestock and crop production logs from the 1860 US Census to forage most effectively and inflict the most damage on the Confederacy by taking their resources. This campaign also approached the rear of Robert E. Lee's forces engaged with Ulysses Grant, increasing the pressure on Lee's army and preventing Confederate reinforcements and supplies from reaching him.

Charles received brevet commissions—a promotion but without a raise in pay—as both second and first lieutenant. He was discharged in 1865 with his regiment, finally returning home to his young family in Illinois. The Civil War did not end until August 20, 1866.

He wasn't home for long before the lust for gold called him back to the West in 1867, this time prospecting in Idaho and Montana. In a letter to his wife from August of 1871, he wrote of an unpleasant encounter with some Wells Fargo and Co. agents and vowed to get revenge. This appears to be when he took on the name "Black Bart" and began robbing Wells Fargo stagecoaches at least 28 times across northern California between 1875 and 1883. Several of these robberies took place on the Siskiyou Trail between California and Oregon.

His first robbery took place in 1875 in Calaveras County, California, on the road between Copperopolis and Milton. He rigged sticks in a bush to look like rifles and politely ordered the driver to "throw down the box." As the driver did so, Boyles shouted, "If he dares to shoot, give him a solid volley, boys." - the driver looked to the bushes, and instead of seeing sticks there, he saw rifle barrels. Boles fled on foot, seeking to recover the empty box. The driver searched the area after Boles left, and he discovered the sticks in the bushes where he had seen rifle barrels in his fearful glances. This first robbery earned Boles $160, about $5200 in 2024, adjusted for inflation.

He wrote poems after his fourth and fifth robberies and left them at the robbery site. These were the only two poems he had ever written, but these made him famous. He took in thousands of dollars a year as a successful highwayman, even though he was afraid of horses and always fled on foot. He did not use curse words except in his poetry, giving him a polite reputation. He dressed in a bowler hat and long linen duster coat, using a flour sack with holes cut for his eyes as a mask during his robberies. He carried a shotgun and brandished it in all his robberies but never fired it. His outfit, shotgun, and mask became his trademarks, and he quickly became famous.

His last robbery took place in November of 1883 at the site of his first robbery. He wore the flour sack mask and had his shotgun in hand, but by this time, the stagecoach companies were bolting the safes to the floor, making them more difficult to remove. Ultimately, this and the number of men that he was against made this a less profitable endeavor than it could have been. The stagecoach was driven by a man named Reason McConnell, who brought the stagecoach across the old road from Sonora to Milton using the Reynolds ferry. McConnell picked up the ferry owner's 19-year-old son Jimmy Rolleri, who had his rifle with him and had gotten off the coach at the bottom of the hill to hunt along the river and meet the coach on the other side. Jimmy arrived at their meeting point but didn't see the coach, so he started walking the coach road. Jimmy spotted the driver and the horses near the summit of the hill. McConnell told Jimmy that as he approached the summit, a man (Boles) had stepped out into the middle of the road from behind a rock with a shotgun in hand, forcing McConnell to unhitch the team and take them over the hill. He attempted to remove the safe, but with the safe bolted to the floor, this took a fair amount of time, and the pair of men caught Boles exiting the coach with the safe. The men fired at Boles but only wounded him in the hand. He ran a quarter mile before wrapping his wounded hand to staunch the bleeding. He found a rotten log and stuffed the sack of gold inside, but kept $500 in gold coins. He hid his shotgun in a hollow tree, tossed everything else aside, and fled. In the items Boles discarded were personal effects later used to tie him to the scene, including eyeglasses and a handkerchief with an identifying laundry mark. A detective employed by Wells Fargo found these items and traced the laundry mark to the correct laundry house after searching 90 different laundry houses and learning that the owner of the handkerchief lived in a boarding house. The owner claimed to be a mining engineer and made "business trips" that coincided with the Wells Fargo robberies. They apprehended Boles, and he initially denied being Black Bart but later confessed to several of the robberies; he wouldn't confess to any of the robberies that occurred before 1879, believing that the statute of limitations had expired on those crimes. The police report stated that Boles was "a person of great endurance. Exhibited genuine wit under most trying circumstances and was extremely proper and polite in behavior. Eschews profanity."

Wells Fargo only pressed charges on the final robbery, and Boles was convicted in 1884 and sentenced to 6 years in San Quentin Prison. He was released in January of 1888 on good behavior. His health significantly deteriorated in prison, and when swarmed with reporters upon his release asking if he intended to rob more stagecoaches, he told them that he was done with crime.

He never returned to his wife after his release from prison, but he wrote letters to her. He had written that he felt demoralized, shadowed by Wells Fargo, and just wanted to get away from everybody. He checked into the Visalia House Hotel in Visalia at the end of February 1888 and was never seen again. Wells Fargo tracked him to the hotel and could find no other trace of Boles. I couldn't find any verified information on his final resting place, just speculation, so I won't share it here.

So, where did the name Black Bart come from? In the early 1870s, preceding Boles' crimes, the Sacramento Union ran a story called The Case of Summerfield by Caxton (a pseudonym of William Henry Rhodes). The villain in the story had long and unruly black hair, wild gray eyes, and a large black beard. You guessed it, the villain's name was Black Bart, and he robbed Wells Fargo stagecoaches. Wells Fargo was one of just a couple stagecoach companies at the time. It's possible that Boles read or was aware of the story, and he told a Wells Fargo detective that the name popped into his head when writing his first poem, so he used it. He only left two poems, one in 1877 at his fourth robbery and one in 1878 at his fifth robbery, quoted in order below:

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

Here I lay me down to sleep

To wait for 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

References:

Robert E. Lee surrenders 1865 - General Robert E. Lee was the commander-in-chief of the Confederate armies. https://american-history.net/american-civil-war/robert-e-lee-surrenders-1865/

Black Bart (outlaw) - Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bart_(outlaw)

Nolan, Frederick (2003). The Wild West: History, Myth & The Making of America: History, Myth & The Making of America. London: Arcturus Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1848585102

Boessenecker, John (1998). Lawman: The Life and Times of Harry Morse, 1835–1912. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 366. ISBN 978-0806130118

Hoeper, George (June 1, 1995). Black Bart: Boulevardier Bandit: The Saga of California's Most Mysterious Stagecoach Robber and the Men Who Sought to Capture Him. Quill Driver Books. ISBN 978-1-884995-05-7

Ommen, Terry (February 25, 2015). "Visalia House - A Bygone Relic of A Frontier Town". Lifestyle Magazine. Archived from the original on June 25, 2018

Estleman, Loren D. (November 14, 2017). The Ballad of Black Bart: A Novel. Tom Doherty Associates. p. 240. ISBN 9780765383532