Black Bart

Found the following story while browsing through the I-net. Don't think you'll see it again in our life time.


Who really shot Black Bart?

Published: May 2, 2007


By CAT SIEH

The Union Democrat


A trail of blood, a misplaced handkerchief, and the laundry mark of Charles E. Bolton.

That's what led to the 1883 capture and imprisonment of legendary stagecoach robber Black Bart, after his last holdup on a Copperopolis hilltop.

But who fired four rifle shots - one of which wounded the outlaw and left valuable evidence - as he escaped from the scene? It's a question that, until now, had a seemingly certain answer.

But a recently discovered manuscript written by the stagecoach driver robbed that day contradicts previous, accepted accounts of Bart's 28th - and last - successful holdup.

Reason "Shotgun" McConnell, a Wells Fargo & Co. driver for 25 years at the time of the robbery, says in his previously unpublished autobiography that he shot at Bart four times that day, grazing his hand and tearing his coat.

The 1912 typed manuscript includes the only known eyewitness account of the robbery. Previous versions of the story credited 19-year-old Jimmy Rolleri with at least two of the shots.

Historians and county locals have told the story like this: On the morning of Nov. 3, 1883, McConnell stopped at the Reynolds Ferry Hotel on the Sonora-Milton stage run.

Rolleri there joined him with hopes of hunting deer with his .44 Henry rifle on the way. After crossing the ferry, halfway up Funk Hill, Rolleri left the stage to hunt. Half an hour down the road, a masked man emerged from behind a boulder pointing a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun at the 59-year-old McConnell.

"When I got within a few rods of the top of the mountain, my lead horses suddenly stopped and threw their ears forward and looked towards a large rock, in the brush," McConnell writes. "There I could see a man's legs wrapped in gunnysacks, as I drove up he came out with a double-barrel shogun and a white sack over his head, with two holes in it for eyes, and a slouch hat on."

It wasn't the first the driver had been robbed. Several years earlier, McConnell writes he was held up between Milton and Angels Camp. McConnell had received letters of commendation from Wells Fargo for fending off robbers in the past.

As Bart began to hack with a hammer at the lock box, which was bolted to the floorboards of the coach, McConnell writes, he led his team of horses away. He then motioned to Rolleri, whom he saw hunting in the distance.

The youth sneaked toward him, McConnell says, and "As he came a little nearer he could see that I had the horses some distance away from the stage, and as I had been held up so many times, he knew at once that another holdup had taken place."

Books on Black Bart by respected historians and accounts by relatives of Rolleri have said McConnell then grabbed Rolleri's rifle, and fired two unsuccessful shots. Then Rolleri took the .44, saying, "Here, let me shoot. I'll get him and I won't kill him either."

McConnell tells a different story. "I was a little leery about returning...but I had (Rolleri's) rifle and he had a shotgun so I thought I would take a chance at him," McConnell writes. "I crawled back (until) I was within 150 yards of the stage. As the robber came out of the stage, he had his gun under one arm and the bag of gold under the other. I took careful aim, pulled the trigger and the gun snapped. I tried again and it fired...instead of stopping to shoot back, he ran straight from me.

"I put in four shots and by this time he was out of sight...I gave the boy his gun and he watched for the robber as I got my team hitched up."

Accounts of the events that followed match up: Bart ran into the woods, Rolleri and McConnell returned to Copperopolis to report the crime, gathered several men and returned to the scene, where Rolleri and an express agent discovered a small piece of luggage containing a silk handkerchief. The men, joined by Calaveras County Sheriff Ben Thorn, also followed a trail of blood until dark.

Wells Fargo detectives later traced a laundry marking on the handkerchief to Charles E. Bolton, aka Charles Boles (Bart's given name) in San Francisco. The mark, along with the fresh wound on Boles' hand led him to later admit to the last robbery only. Authorities suspected him to be responsible for the nearly 30 robberies attributed to Black Bart in the late 1800s.

William Renwick, 89, of Stockton, said he discovered his great grandfather's account two years ago among a cardboard box of family memorabilia he received after an aunt's death nearly a decade ago.

He said he found the manuscript - a thin sheaf of translucent yellow papers - remarkable, but didn't think it would be the subject of historical examination. Before examining the box, Renwick said he knew little of his relative's legacy.

"I just knew `Shotgun' McConnell was my great-grandfather," he said, seated in the Main Street San Andreas Courthouse where Bart was sentenced to six years in San Quentin. He received the relatively lenient sentence for the last robbery in exchange for showing authorities where more than $4,000 - the equivalent of more than $83,000 today - from the holdup was hidden.

Downstairs in the courthouse is the jail where Bart was held after the crime, and across the street lies the modern-day Black Bart Inn.

Before his sentence was up in 1888 - reduced to four years and two months for good behavior - Bart wrote McConnell a letter from prison. It acknowledges the "kind compliments so hastily sent me on the third of November last...I have often admired your qualities as a driver, and only regret that I am unable to compliment you on your marksmanship." The letter was signed "yours in haste, B.B.," and "P.S. but not in quite so much of a hurry as on a former occasion."

A public presentation of McConnell's manuscript is scheduled for May 24 at the Metropolitan in San Andreas. A western Calaveras County historian Sal Manna, who organized the event, said many people received credit for nabbing Black Bart, mainly the Wells Fargo detectives and Sheriff Thorn.

"I became a little sore in some spots myself as the paper had never even mentioned my name in connection with the capture in any way," McConnell's manuscript reads. "Had I not shot and wounded him we would never have obtained the handkerchief...by which he was found and captured."

A Nov. 10, 1883 Calaveras Weekly Citizen article reports McConnell fired two shots, then Rolleri fired another two. The Citizen says in a Nov. 17 article that McConnell fired all four. Manna said it is not clear why McConnell hasn't been recognized in the past if the account was reported by newspapers.

Wells Fargo fired McConnell in 1903 after newspapers reported that "in his usual honest and methodical way" he had not fired back on another Copperopolis robber, because his passengers were in the line of fire.

In the dismissal letter, Wells Fargo calls McConnell "an honorable and upright man and good citizen."


Contact Cat Sieh at csieh@uniondemocrat.com or 736-8097.