An icon of the Old West

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, biographies, outlaws, stage robbers

He was a Civil War hero, wounded twice. He didn't smoke, drink or visit bordellos. He was polite and spoke as an educated man. He married and had children, then abandoned them. He seldom swore, and though he carried a shotgun to ply his trade, only discharged it once, and that was an accident. He claimed he never stole from persons, only from Wells Fargo—but he actually reaped more from cash and gold sent by registered mail, so it's hard to credit such a statement.

He was Charley Boles, known to post-Civil-War San Francisco society as Charles E. Bolton, and to stage drivers and lawmen in northern California as Black Bart. On a few occasions, he left doggerel poems behind at a robbery scene, signed "Black Bart, the Po8".

As the picture shows, he disguised not just his face but his whole costume; he usually wrapped his boots in cloth to make himself hard to track. He walked, and never rode a horse when "working", making tracking him even more difficult. He could walk 50 miles a day.

He robbed 26 stagecoaches over a period of 17 years, and after a four-year stint in San Quentin prison, three more. During the short post-prison period he corresponded with his family, but didn't return to see them. Then he vanished from history. Nothing is know of his fate after November 20, 1888, when he committed his last (known) robbery. The 29 stage robberies of his that are known make him the most prolific stage robber in history.

This is a brief sketch of the history detailed in Gentleman Bandit: The True Story of Black Bart, the Old West's Most Infamous Stagecoach Robber, by John Boessenecker. The illustration above is from p159. The author tells in his Acknowledgements that he gathered material about Black Bart for fifty-plus years. The depth and breadth of his research is evident, making for a fascinating account.