Legends of the Old West - OUTLAWS Ep. 1 | “Black Bart: Outlaw Poet”
Episode Date: March 19, 2025Charley Boles tries life as a miner in the California gold rush and then life as a family farmer in Illinois. But wealth lures him west again, and he decides it’s easier to steal from Wells, Fargo &... Company than to pan for gold in the freezing rivers of California. He starts robbing stagecoaches and he soon becomes a pioneer of the trade. He gives himself a nickname and begins to write his own legacy. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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John Shine had been up since 3 a.m. on the morning of July 26, 1875, and his fatigue
was steadily growing.
Shine was a stage driver who was guiding his coach through Calaveras County, California.
He was 27 years old, a veteran of the Civil War, and in his prime.
It was a good thing he was an experienced driver.
The route he was taking that day required poise and experience. He
and his team of horses departed the town of Sonora, California earlier that day. They
were heading west and were taking a familiar trek to the settlement of Milton.
The roughly 40-mile journey was not the most difficult carriageway in Calaveras County,
but Shine had to keep his wits about him nonetheless.
Not only did he have 10 passengers crammed into his stagecoach, but Shine also had a
US mail pouch and a strong box from Wells Fargo and Company.
As the horses pounded the dirt, Shine spied the hardest part of his journey.
Funk Hill, which sat four miles east of a mining town with the cheeky name of Copperopolis,
was arguably the steepest part of the route. Shine coaxed his team of horses up the hill's
incline. At first, the ascent was not memorable. As Shine cautiously piloted his stagecoach
up Funk Hill, he thought the most difficult part would be protecting the horses from exhaustion.
20 miles into the journey, he and his team were doing well until an unexpected interruption
changed Shine's day and the Old West forever.
As the loaded stagecoach rolled slowly along, John Shine suddenly yanked on the reins.
In front of him stood a figure unlike any he had ever seen. The
mystery man's face was shrouded in a mask made out of a flower sack, which featured
two jagged holes for the eyes. The man wore a dirty white duster and a pair of boots which
were wrapped in cloth to hide his footprints. Slung across his back was a lever-action Henry
rifle.
Shine and his passengers took in the sight, but all of them inevitably turned their gaze
to the hollow and ominous twin barrels of the double barrel shotgun that the man pointed
at the stagecoach. As Shine slowed the stagecoach, he and the passengers also noticed rifle barrels
poking out of the brush on both sides of the road.
A young miner in the stagecoach foolishly tried to draw his gun, but he stopped when
the masked man shouted, If he dares to shoot, give him a volley, boys.
Undoubtedly some of the eyes of the passengers flitted back to the gun barrels in the brush.
It certainly appeared as though the stage coach had rolled
into a well-laid ambush. Of the ten passengers on board the stage that day, eight of them were
women and children. One of the women was convinced the man was there to rob them of their possessions,
so she threw her purse out the window. In what would be one of the many surprises that day,
the bandit picked up the purse and returned it to the female passenger.
In a deep, low voice, the robber said, I do not want your money.
I only want boxes.
Shine tossed the Wells Fargo Express box down to the bandit.
The driver then grabbed the mailbag and lowered it as well.
Satisfied with the compliance and with a wave of his hand, the robber told Shine,
That'll be about all, boys.
Drive on.
Not needing to be told twice, Shine snapped the reins and the coach jolted forward.
As he urged his team onward, Shine glanced back and saw the robber begin to smash the
Wells Fargo box with a hatchet. But notably,
John Shine did not see any of the robber's associates hurry out of the brush to assist the
effort. If he was puzzled by the sight, it would take quite a while for his questions to be
answered. John Shine and his stagecoach of 10 passengers were the first, but far from the last,
to stumble into a trap that would soon become
familiar to travelers in central California.
The westbound stage from Sonora to Milton on July 26, 1875, was the first to be robbed
by the outlaw who called himself Black Bart, a bandit, soldier, prospector, poet, and devilishly
clever thorn in the side of Wells Fargo.
From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West.
I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the stories of infamous outlaws
Charlie Bowles, better known as Black Bart, Dirty Dave
Rudaball, and the Doolan Dalton gang. This is episode 1, Black Bart part 1 of 2, the
Outlaw Poet.
Long before he became a famous stagecoach robber, the man who would be known as Black
Bart was born Charles Bowles in 1829 in Norfolk, England, which rests in the lowlands of the
eastern part of the country.
Bowles was the third of ten children.
When he was about two years old, Charles, who was often called Charlie, moved with his
family to the United States.
Charlie's father bought a farm in Jefferson County, New York.
Little is known about his childhood, but it's likely, based on his later actions, that he
received some formal education and learned proper etiquette.
His ability to write, his talent with language, and his sophisticated demeanor did not develop
through laboring on a farm every day from dawn to dusk.
When Charlie was 20, he caught the fever that was racing across the United States, gold
fever.
In January 1848, right before the Mexican-American War ended, gold was discovered in Northern
California.
By 1849, news of the discovery had circled the globe.
People from all walks of life, but most often young men, lit out for California.
The prospectors, known as 49ers, had dreams of striking it rich.
In late 1849, Charlie, his brother James, and cousin David joined the throng of Americans
who made the arduous journey westward in the hopes of finding their own personal El Dorado,
the fabled City of Gold in Northern California.
The trio began prospecting along the North Fork American River near Sacramento.
Panning for gold was long, cold, difficult work, and it was fruitless for many prospectors.
Mining camps were notorious for being violent.
If a miner avoided becoming a victim of crime, he usually became a victim of cholera or typhoid. In the end, most miners were just victims of bad luck,
and Charlie Bowles was one of them. More than $2 million worth of gold was mined between 1849
and 1852, but Charlie and his family saw relatively little of it. Charlie, James, and David returned to New York in 1852, but gold fever was not easily
shrugged off.
Soon, Charlie wanted to go back to California, and his cousin David agreed.
Charlie convinced another brother, Robert, to come along after James declined.
The new trio arrived in California in the summer of 1852, but soon after their arrival, David and Robert
fell sick. Neither recovered, and both were buried in California. With his two relatives and mining
companions dead, Charlie was alone. He also faced a tough decision. Should he return home, bearing
the bad news, or should he try once more to make his fortune
in the hills of Northern California?
He chose the latter.
Charlie remained in California for two more years.
His prospecting did not result in any bonanzas, but he did manage to keep himself alive and
unharmed.
According to official documents, Bowles quit prospecting and permanently relocated to Illinois
in 1854. He changed the spelling of his surname from B-O-W-L-E-S to B-O-L-E-S. That same year,
he married Mary Elizabeth Johnson, and they quickly started a family. Within six years, by 1860,
Charlie and Elizabeth had two kids and had settled
in the farming and railroad town of Decatur, Illinois. Charlie Bowles was a family man
in a small Midwestern community, and nothing in his life, other than maybe his bout of
gold fever, hinted at the path he would follow in later years. But the U.S. was about to
begin the most dramatic and seismic
period of its history.
When the American Civil War began in April 1861,
Charlie Bowles was 32 years old, and his wife
was due to deliver their third child in June,
so Charlie did not rush off to the war.
In 1862, Charlie enlisted at the age of 33, and he joined the 116th Illinois. By
all accounts, Private Charlie Bowles was a dutiful soldier. He had the respect of his
comrades and was soon promoted to First Sergeant of Company B. Charlie's first action was
the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou in Mississippi from December 26th to 29th, 1862. It was the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou in Mississippi from December 26th to 29th, 1862. It was the
first major battle of the campaign led by Union Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S.
Grant to capture the valuable Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Although the battle was
a Union defeat, the Federal forces regrouped, surrounded Vicksburg,
and besieged the city.
Five months later, as the siege seemed endless, Charlie in the 116th Illinois made multiple
assaults against Vicksburg's impressive fortifications in May 1863.
As he and his comrades surged toward the enemy, a Confederate round smashed into Charlie's side.
The velocity of the ball was so strong
that it went through Charlie's cartridge box,
his leather belt, his jacket,
and his shirt like a hot knife through butter.
The ball inflicted a deep wound,
and it remained lodged in Charlie's side
as he was carried from the battlefield.
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Remarkably, Charlie's wound did not become infected.
He remained with the 116th as the regiment continued to fight in major military campaigns. During the intense combat in and around Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the fall of 1863, Charlie and
his comrades participated in a bold attack against Confederate defenders who protected
the high ground called Missionary Ridge outside the city.
Caked in soot and blood, Charlie and his men helped the Union Army achieve a massive victory.
Because of his bravery, Charlie received two battlefield promotions. He achieved the rank
of Brevet First Lieutenant and fought throughout the remainder of the war. Some of the highlights
of his service included participation in General William Tecumseh Sherman's infamous March
to the Sea in Georgia, and then the Union Army's grand
parade in Washington, D.C. after the war.
Charlie Bowles returned home with the 116th Illinois after the regiment was discharged
from service on June 7, 1865.
Like many men who endured the hardships of war, Charlie tried to return to a normal routine.
It looked as if Charlie's life reverted to a mundane existence.
But the same fever that struck him as a young man returned.
There was gold in Montana, and Charlie Bowles couldn't fight the urge to go west again.
Gold had been discovered in Montana territory in 1862, and now that the war was over, legions
of people moved west to strike it rich in Big Sky country.
In 1867, Charlie sold his farm and relocated his wife and family, which now consisted of
four children, to a nearby town in Illinois.
Then he headed west toward Montana, and he
never returned home.
Supposedly, Charlie got his wife's permission to leave the family and go prospecting. He
had convinced her he could make a lot of money and provide for his family more so than if
he remained a farmer. So off Charlie went, and when he arrived in Montana, he began working for a miner named
Henry Roberts.
Roberts later became a successful businessman and one of the directors of the Anglo-Montana
Mining Company.
But Charlie Bowles was on a different path.
Charlie sifted for gold in the Montana Hills for at least two years.
In August 1871, Charlie wrote to his wife and told her that he had made his stake.
He had apparently accumulated enough gold to provide for his family, as he had promised.
But in the same letter, he also informed his wife that something had made him vehemently
angry.
According to Charlie, several men approached him and asked if he wanted to sell shares
in his mining operation. Charlie declined. The men didn't seem to appreciate the response,
and they trudged away. Two days later, the water flow that Charlie needed to be able
to sift his gold began to decrease in volume. Eventually, it slowed to a trickle, and then
it stopped completely.
The men he had rebuffed bought two claims upstream and dammed the water. Charlie was
outraged, and he soon discovered that the men were associated with Wells Fargo and Company.
Wells Fargo is a recognizable name today in banking and business, and it was the premier
banking and express organization in the American
West.
In the West, Wells Fargo shipped payroll for businesses, it delivered mail that often contained
cash, and it drove travelers to their destinations in its iconic stagecoaches.
But unbeknownst to the company, it had just made an enemy of Charlie Bowles.
The company, of course, knew nothing of Charlie Bowles.
He was just one miner among thousands in the West.
But in Charlie's letter to his wife,
he said he was going to, quote,
take steps to rectify the injustice.
It took time for Charlie to begin to execute his plan.
But when he did, it quickly became clear
that Wells Fargo was his primary target.
Charlie's life is mostly a mystery from 1871 to 1875. Information about his actions and exploits
are scant in the historical record. But three things are certain. In 1871, he wrote to his wife for the last time from the mining town of Silver Bow in
southwest Montana.
Second, his wife and family would not hear his name again until he was a convicted criminal.
Third, Charlie Bowles drifted through Utah and Nevada before arriving in California in
1875.
It had been more than 20 years since Charlie's second trip to California to prospect for
gold, and when he returned now for the third time, the state was both similar and radically
different from his previous experiences.
It was similar in that there were still miners and mines in abundance, although the mining
process was more commonly hydraulic mining, which
used high-pressure water jets to expose gold in the rock formations. It was different because
California's population had grown significantly.
Because California's gold was located in the northern part of the state, San Francisco
became the most thriving city. Its population exploded.
By 1870, it was the 10th most populated city in the country, and the most populated city
west of Chicago by far.
San Francisco became Charlie's home, and it was where he started to lead a double life.
He grew to enjoy the finer things in life. Using the money that was supposed to go back
to his wife and children, Charlie ate at fine restaurants and sometimes stayed at luxurious
hotels. He donned immaculate and expensive clothes. Charlie reinvented himself as a mining
magnate and investor who used the name Charles Bolton. Charlie looked the part and sounded the part.
He was in his mid-40s, he had a distinguished look supported by graying hair, and he had a bushy yet
dashing mustache. He made friends with businessmen, restaurateurs, and ironically, policemen.
The problem was that Charlie was not a magnate. He did not have unlimited funds,
so he needed to find a way to get enough cash to supplement his new lifestyle. And he had
no interest in going back to a life of unending labor like a miner or a farmer.
He heard that some bandits in Northern California had made lots of money by robbing stagecoaches.
And that was the solution for Charlie Bowles.
He would rob stagecoaches to supplement his lifestyle. And he would exact a measure of
revenge against Wells Fargo at the same time. That was how Charlie Bowles found himself
standing in the middle of a road in Calaveras County at 3 a.m. with John Shine's stagecoach
rolling toward him. The horses that had just pulled Shine and his 10 passengers up the steep incline of
Funk Hill were understandably tired.
They rounded a bend at a slow pace, and then Shine stopped them with a jerk of the reins.
Charlie Bowles stood in the road with a flower sack over his head as a mask and a double-barrel
shotgun in his hands.
After some back and forth with John Shine and a couple of the passengers, Charlie convinced
Shine to throw down the Wells Fargo box that he was sure would be on the stage.
Shine tossed the box to the ground, and then Charlie allowed the stage to continue on its
way.
He refused to take anything from the passengers. He only wanted
the Wells Fargo box. He had learned the stage routes, and it was a solid bet that many,
if not most, of the stagecoaches would carry a money box. After John Shine's stagecoach rumbled
onward, Charlie used a hatchet to smash open the Wells Fargo box. Inside was $160, roughly $4,500 in today's money.
But Charlie didn't have time to revel in his success.
No sooner had John Shine's coach moved on
than another stage coach rolled up Funk Hill.
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Donald McLean, the driver of the second stage coach, was taking several passengers from Sonora to Milton.
Despite Charlie's knowledge of the stage routes, he wasn't expecting another coach
that night.
And McLean definitely wasn't expecting to turn the corner and be confronted by a highwayman.
Charlie, still wearing his mask, leveled his shotgun at McLean.
He politely requested the Wells Fargo box.
McLean calmly told the masked bandit that the coach was a private stage and did not
have an express box.
Instead of cursing or robbing the passengers, Charlie took a step back and waved the coach
on.
McLean did not need to be told twice.
He snapped the reins and hurried his team onward.
When McLean's stage was out of sight, Charlie took off.
And it was a good thing he did, because McLean's stage soon encountered John Shine's stage.
Shine had paused his coach while he and his two male passengers debated if they should
go back and confront the desperado.
With McLean and his passengers present, the men thought they had enough firepower to go
after Charlie and his gang.
Everyone had seen the gun barrels sticking out of the bushes along the sides of the road,
and Shine's group had heard Charlie shout to his crew of robbers.
When Shine, McLean, and their impromptu posse hurried back to the site of the robbery, they
learned the truth of their experience.
Charlie Bowles had vanished. All that remained was the splintered Wells Fargo box, the mail
pouch, and the rifle barrels that were still
peeking out of the brush. It seemed impossible to believe that the gang members would have
left their rifles behind, and of course they didn't. There was no gang and there were no rifles.
As Shine approached the shrubs, he realized it was all a trick. The rifles were just sticks.
Surviving accounts don't specify that the sticks were
coated with black paint or shoe polish, but they probably were. In the darkness of 3 o'clock in the
morning, sticks painted black could easily have tricked the passengers. Like the flower sack mask
and the shotgun, the fake firearms would be a trademark of Charlie's criminal career. He worked alone and he used his brains instead of brawn.
To that end, another hallmark was his simple plan to literally cover his tracks.
In that first robbery, he wrapped his boots in cloth
to prevent them from leaving distinguishable footprints.
That detail was important to Charlie because of a rare quirk
of his personality. Despite growing up in a rural community and spending copious time
in the West, Charlie Bowles was terrified of horses. Because of his fear of horses,
he always escaped on foot, hence the need to cover his footprints.
The robbery on Funk Hill satisfied Charlie's financial needs for a little while, but soon
enough the money ran out and it was time to rob another stage coach.
This time he stopped to coach in Yuba County, California.
Yuba County was more than 100 miles north of his first robbery and it was a place where
gold had been found in abundance.
Wells Fargo coaches raced across the area, and the next unlucky stage was driven by Mike
Hogan.
He was taking his coach from San Juan to Marysville, north of Sacramento.
Mike Hogan's stage coach had been robbed on December 15, 1875 by a man armed with a
rifle. On December 28, 1875, Hogan's stage was
robbed again as it rounded a bend. But this time, it was robbed by Charlie Bowles. Like
Charlie's first robbery, he was brandishing his double-barrel shotgun and using his flower
sack mask. Hogan pulled on the reins, and Charlie set to work demanding the Wells Fargo Express
box and the mail sack. The driver complied, and after the desired items were tossed down
from the stagecoach, Charlie sent the coach onward.
The money was enough to hold Charlie over, so he decided to lay low as the calendar turned
from 1875 to 1876. During the winter, he continued to act as the stylish
and respectable Charles Bolton in San Francisco. When the money ran out in May of 1876, he
went out robbing again. But it would be a long time before he robbed multiple stage
coaches in a single year. He seemed to begin a pattern of one robbery per summer. And during the
second in the pattern, he started to write his own legacy and legend.
On June 2, 1876, five miles from the settlement of Cottonwood, Charlie donned his hood and
his white coat and he stood in the middle of the road.
It was nighttime, and presumably there was a decent moon out that night.
A stagecoach rolled up and stopped at the sight of a man with a shotgun.
Charlie demanded the express box and the mail bag.
He kept his shotgun trained on the driver as the man nervously tossed down the items.
Charlie sent the coach on his way, and he laid low for a year.
On August 3, 1877, he went to Sonoma County, California.
He held up a stagecoach using his tried and true method, and then he escaped on foot.
But that robbery was the one that really set him apart from other bandits.
In the busted-up Wells Fargo money box, he left behind a brown scrap of paper on which
he had written a poem.
It 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.
It was signed Black Bart, 1877.
Charlie gave himself the famous nickname, and he became the outlaw poet.
But he waited a year before he showcased his literary talents again.
In the early morning hours of July 25, 1878, Charlie Black Bart Bowles laid in wait for
an oncoming stagecoach.
He was positioned on a wagon road, which is now Highway 162, between the towns of Quincy
and Oroville in Yuba County.
He knew the area well, and he had hoped to rob a stagecoach that carried gold which was
being shipped from the local mines.
As a stagecoach drew near, Charlie raised his shotgun and shouted, throw out the box.
The driver halted the coach and did as he was told.
When Charlie had the express box, he told the driver to move on, which the driver gladly
did.
When a posse found the empty express box, they
also found a new poem, which 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 the box, tis money in my purse."
The poem was signed, Black Bart, the Poet.
Charlie Bowles was not the most prolific highwayman in the West, at least not yet, but he was
certainly one of a kind.
With his signature dress style and methods during his robberies, and now his poems and his nickname, Wells Fargo detectives knew they were looking for a distinctive figure.
Whether it helped detectives or not, the Black Bart nickname originated in Charlie's adopted
home of San Francisco.
Charlie borrowed the name from a short story that had been published two years earlier.
The story was written by San Francisco lawyer William Rhodes,
and it featured a cavalcade of villains. One was a stagecoach robber named Bartholomew Graham,
who went by the alias Black Bart. By the summer of 1878, the real bandit who was using the name of
the fictitious bandit started to draw more attention from authorities in Northern California.
Wells Fargo, the U.S. Post Office, and the state of California pooled their resources
and offered an $800 reward for the capture of Black Bart. Today, that would be more than
$23,000. And it didn't work.
At one point, authorities thought they might have caught the bandit who had robbed multiple
stages in Northern California over the past couple years.
A posse nabbed two ex-convicts.
One of them was the same height, age, and complexion as Charlie Bowles, and the man
was known to carry a shotgun. Both ex-cons
were soon convicted of possessing stolen property, but neither was Black Bart the poet.
As always, Charlie Bowles had walked and ridden trains back to San Francisco after his robbery
in Yuba County. He enjoyed himself in the big city, but the allure of more money drew
Charlie back to the winding roads of Northern California.
On October 2, 1878, Black Bart robbed his seventh stage coach.
This time, he traveled about 150 miles north of San Francisco to Mendocino County.
He robbed two stage coaches in two days, which made three robberies for the year.
He tripled his usual once-a-year pattern.
For the next eight months, Black Bart remained dormant.
But on June 21, 1879, he was back at it.
Decked out in his normal attire, mask and all,
Charlie Bowles held up a stage bound for Oroville
in his familiar territory of Yuba County.
Then he did another
double dip in October 1879 when he robbed two stagecoaches at the end of the month.
That made 12 robberies in the space of four years, nearly all of which cost Wells Fargo money.
The company was not happy, and its detectives were frustrated.
happy and its detectives were frustrated. As lawmen fruitlessly searched for Black Bart, the bandit paused his criminal activities
for 11 months. The money from the express boxes and the mail bags was easily funding
his lifestyle, and the long stretches of inactivity made it tough to track him down. Wells Fargo detective
James Hume, who will play a prominent role in Black Bart's story, was the lead investigator,
and he wrote detailed notes about each crime. Hume created a profile based on witness statements
and evidence. He was looking for an older gentleman with a slim frame who was familiar with the region
and who must have had some sort of aversion to horses because there were never any hoof prints looking for an older gentleman with a slim frame who was familiar with the region and
who must have had some sort of aversion to horses because there were never any hoof prints
at the scenes of the crimes. The bandit was always calm and polite. He always carried
a shotgun, but he never used it. He stole from the money box and the mail pouches, but
never the passengers. It was a fair amount of information, but not nearly
enough to identify the outlaw poet who called himself Black Bart.
Wells Fargo was frustrated. California's government had no answers. Charlie Bowles
was feeling mighty fine, but as always, his money started to run out. In 1880, he expanded
his operations northward. Now, coaches in Oregon had to watch
out for a bandit with a bowler hat, a shotgun, and an unexpectedly polite demeanor. With
that combination, Black Bart would become one of the most successful bandits of the
Old West. Next time on Legends of the Old West, Charlie Bowles ventures up to Oregon and then returns
to his home territory of California. He continues to frustrate detectives as he robs stage after
stage. But nothing lasts forever, and Detective James Hume finally gets a lead on the masked
bandit whom he has tracked for years.
That's next week on Legends of the Old West.
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This series was researched and written by Michael Meglish.
The producer was Joe Guerra.
Original music by Rob Valier.
I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.
I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.
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