For eight years, from 1875 to 1883, a dapper highwayman robbed stagecoaches throughout the Gold Country and California.  He wore a flour sack as a mask with a jaunty derby poised atop.  He never fired his gun.  He never harmed any victims.  He always traveled on foot.  He drove Wells Fargo crazy. He called himself “Black Bart.” 

The criminal was Charles E. Boles, an English immigrant born in 1829.  At the age of two, Boles migrated to a New York farming homestead with his parents.  In 1849, young Charles set out for the California goldfields.  Most likely he ended up in Columbia when gold was discovered there in March 1850.  Unsuccessful, he returned to New York.  Life on the farm was dull, and Charles headed back to the Gold Country in 1852.  Once again, failure was his associate.  Boles headed eastward to Illinois. He married and would have two daughters by 1861.

Charles Boles enlisted in the Union Army when Civil War erupted.  He was attached to Sherman’s forces that swept through Georgia on the fabled “March to the Sea.” 

Following his military service, Boles traveled to the silver mines in Idaho and Montana in 1867.  In August of 1871, he returned to the California diggins another time.  He stopped writing to his wife, Mary Elizabeth.  She assumed he was dead. 

Boles was not dead, just transformed.  On July 26, 1875, Boles robbed the Sonora to Milton stage.  He appeared on a lonely stretch of the road, dressed in a light colored duster, and with his flour sack headdress.  Two holes had been cut out for vision.  He looked like Casper the Ghost, but he was a spook carrying a double-barreled shotgun.

He politely asked the stage driver, John Shine, “Will you please throw down your treasure box, sir?"

Shine complied and Boles’ career began.  But he was just a nameless, faceless stage robber until 1877.  On August 3 of that year after he had held up the stage on its route along the Russian River, the highwayman left a clue that would cement  his place in history. It was four lines of poetry, written on the back of a waybill and left under a rock atop a tree stump. The poem, which delighted the public but gave no hint as to the writer's identity, was as follows:

            "I've labored long and hard for bread,
            For honor and for riches
            But on my corns too long you've tred
            You fine-haired sons of bitches."

Each line was written in a different handwriting style to disguise the author, and was signed, "Black Bart, the P08."

Now the robber had a name and a growing reputation.

Why “Black Bart?” The belief is that Boles became enamored of a serial adventure published in the Sacramento Union in the 1870s that was entitled “The Case of Summerfield.”  One of the villainous characters was Bartholomew Graham, who was nicknamed Black Bart and was wanted for robbing Wells Fargo stages.  Boles simply adopted the character as his own.

But while the fictional character Black Bart was unruly, wild, and discourteous, Boles’ Black Bart was unfailingly courtly.  Although he used a shotgun for every robbery, he never fired it.  He was polite to both drivers and passengers and never took anything more than the strongbox and the mailbag. Legend has it that when a petrified woman passenger threw down her purse, he valiantly returned it. Supposedly, with a tip of his derby, he told her , “Thank you, madam, but I don’t need your money.  I only want Wells Fargo’s.”

 The public ate up the exploits of Black Bart and for eight years Black Bart executed nearly thirty robberies.  Some estimates claim he averaged nearly $6000 annually.  In today’s currency, that would be well over $100K per year.  It is important to remember that Black Bart was a criminal.  A glamorous thief is still a thief.  Innocent people were harmed.  Lives were damaged.

It was the poetry that gave Black Bart his panache, but he actually left only two verses. The second was after the robbery of the Quincy to Oroville stage in 1878.   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 seemed invincible, but Wells Fargo’s detective James Hume and his fellow agents would not give in.  They also were incredibly lucky. 

On November 3, 1883, Black Bart returned to Calvaeras County and to the site of his first robbery.  The stage drivers, McConnell and Rolleri, were prepared for a visit from the dashing, poetic desperado, as he was increasingly portrayed in the press.  McConnell had bolted the strongbox to the floor in the passenger compartment instead of its usual place beneath the driver’s seat.  Rolleri had brought a new Henry rifle. 

As the stage neared the robbery point, Rolleri left to go hunting.  Just ahead, Black Bart sprung from the bushes and politely asked for the strongbox.  Finding it bolted in a different location, Black Bart was thrown from his typical timetable.  Rolleri returned and took three shots at the flour sack.  He missed.  Black Bart was terrified and dashed into the underbrush.

In his haste, Black Bart left behind his derby, a straight razor, binoculars, and some buckshot wrapped in a handkerchief.  The hanky  bore the laundry mark “FX07.”
Wells Fargo agents traced the mark through ninety-one San Francisco laundries.  After a week of intensive searching,  the investigation struck paydirt.  The infamous Black Bart was located at his rented room  -- Room 40, 37 2nd Street -- in San Francisco, where he was registered as Charles E. Bolton, a respectable "mining man."  

Black Bart was arrested by Special Agent James Hume whose report described Bolton as “A person of great endurance.  Exhibited genuine wit under the most trying circumstances.  Extremely proper and polite in behaviour, eschews profanity.” Physically, he was far from the heroic presence painted in the newspapers -- Black Bart was five foot nine, middle aged, slightly built, with a receding hairline, a small mole on his left cheek, cold blue eyes with heavy eyelids, gray hair, hairy forearms and two missing front teeth.  More mouse, than mighty.  Police found a Bible in his room with his real name written on the flyleaf --  Charles E. Boles. 

When a second handkerchief bearing the same laundry mark was discovered in Boles’ room, Black Bart still protested his innocence.  Boles was transported back to San Andreas. 

 After extensive questioning, Black Bart finally confessed to the robberies.   The next day he pled guilty in the Calaveras County Courthouse to Judge P.H. Kean.  The following day Boles (who had insisted upon being called “Charles E. Bolton” during his confinement) appeared before another judge, C.V. Gottshalk.  Boles waived his right to a jury trial and was sentenced to six years in San Quentin.   It was November 21, 1883 -- only eighteen days elapsed between the time he robbed the Sonora stage and the day he was committed to San Quentin prison.

But Black Bart's story didn't conclude there. After serving about four years of his sentence, he was released in 1888 for good behavior.  Upon his discharge, reporters bombarded him with questions.

“Will you rob any more stages?,” they asked.

“No, gentlemen,” Boles replied, “I’m all through with crime.”

“Will you write more poetry?”

Black Bart laughed, “Now didn’t you hear me say that I am through with crime?”

Rumors spread that Charles Boles and Wells Fargo had reached a secret agreement. Wells Fargo, it was whispered, had paid Black Bart to stay away from their stages.  The company vehemently denied it. There is no proof of the arrangement.  However, soon afterward stages were again being robbed by a lone lawbreaker. Coincidence?  Was California's most successful, most flashy outlaw back at work?  

Charles Boles was wanted for questioning. Boles had disappeared. He would never be seen again. But Black Bart lives on.

 

Image credits:

SNVM Staff; Online Archive of California; Wells Fargo History Room, San Francisco, California.

 

File captions:

Black Bart 2 -  Charles E. Boles, aka “Black Bart”

Black Bart – Calaveras Deputies --- The Calaveras County deputies who captured Black Bart

Black Bart – Dime Novel --  Black Bart became a popular culture fascination

Black Bart – Hume – James Hume, Wells Fargo Agent

Black Bart - San Andreas 1 – The historic Calaveras County Courthouse today

Black Bart - San Andreas 2 – The judge’s chambers in the historic Calaveras County Courthouse

Black Bart – San Andreas 3 – Black Bart’s legacy is everywhere in San Andreas

Black Bart – San Andreas 4 – The courtroom in the historic Calaveras County Courthouse

Black Bart – San Andreas 5 – The cell in which Black Bart was held n San Andreas

Black Bart – San Andreas – San Andreas in the 1870s

Black Bart – strongbox – A Wells Fargo Stagecoach “Strongbox”

Black Bart – Wanted poster – Black Bart’s Wanted Poster

Black Bart – Wells Fargo office – A typical Wells Fargo Office from Black Bart’s time