Meet the real Black Bart

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Did you know that Black Bart was a real man? And an interesting one, too.

Charles E. Bowles was born in England in 1829 and his family immigrated to the United States when he was two years old. Charles grew up on his family farm in Jefferson County, New York. He and a cousin headed to the California gold fields when he was twenty years old, arriving in 1850. They mined near Sacramento, but returned home in 1852, no richer than when they had left. After another trip to the gold fields, Charles returned to the east, married, settled on a farm in Illinois and had four children. When the Civil War started, he joined the Union Army and attained the rank of sergeant.

After the war, Charles left his family in Illinois and struck out for Montana and Idaho, hoping to strike it rich. He located a claim in Montana, which men from Wells Fargo tried to buy from him. He refused to sell, and Wells Fargo resorted to hardball tactics, cutting off their water supply, which made it impossible to mine.  He wrote to his wife about his difficulties with Wells Fargo and said that he was going to take steps to right the wrong done against him. The last letter his wife received was from Montana in 1871.  His wife never heard from him again and assumed he was dead.

This is where it gets good.

Charles became a new man. He changed his last name from Bowles to Boles, and adapted an elegant style of dress. He also targeted the Wells Fargo company for revenge. In fifteen years, Wells Fargo lost $415,000 in gold to outlaws. Charles intended to add to that figure.

In July 1875, Charles held up his first stagecoach near Copperopolis, California. Wearing a long duster, a flour sack over his head with eyes cut out, and a dapper black derby hat, he jumped out from behind a boulder and stopped the stagecoach.  He politely asked for the strong box to be thrown down, then he called over his shoulder to his “gang” to open fire if the driver shot at him. Seeing the barrels of rifles sticking out of from the brush, the driver complied. A woman offered her purse, but Black Bart told her he was only interested in Wells Fargo gold. After Charles had hacked open the strongbox and left with the contents, the stage driver realized that the rifle barrels where sticks tied to brush to look like rifle barrels.

He committed another robbery using this exact tactic five months later, and another six months after that. During his fourth robbery a little over a year later, he identified himself as Black Bart, leaving a humorous note and signing it with that moniker. He left a poem signed Black Bart after his next robbery a year later.

Black Bart robbed at least 28 stagecoaches over his outlaw career and netted at least $18,000. The interesting thing was that he always robbed on foot because he was afraid of horses. He never robbed a single passenger because his grievance was against Wells Fargo. On his last robbery, near the location of the first, he ran into trouble. The strongbox was bolted to the stagecoach, so he had to hack into it with an axe. The lone passenger on the stage, who had actually left the stagecoach while it lumbered up a steep hill just prior to Charles stopping it, saw what was happening and fired some shots. One hit Charles in the hand. He escaped with gold, but dropped a handkerchief with a distinctive laundry mark, which was used to hunt him down.

Wells Fargo only pressed charges for the final robbery, and Charles was sentenced to six years in San Quentin. He was released early for good behavior and left behind his life of crime. He lived in San Francisco and Visalia California before disappearing in 1888.

There was a rumor that Charles once again started robbing Wells Fargo stagecoaches, stopping only when Wells Fargo paid him a $200 a month pension.  Another rumor was that he became a pharmacist in Maryville, California, and the last was that he’d spoken of retiring to Japan, and that he may well have done just that.

So…hat’s off to Black Bart, the polite poet bandit with a fear of horses who refused to rob anyone except for the company that had cost him his mine in Montana.

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Jeannie Watt raises cattle in Montana and loves all things western. When she's not writing, Jeannie enjoys sewing, making mosaic mirrors, riding her horses and buying hay. Lots and lots of hay.

30 thoughts on “Meet the real Black Bart”

  4. It would be fun to see a movie made about his life. Thanks for the post, it was very interesting.

  5. How interesting! I’ve never heard any of this before. How sad that he just deserted his family. I wonder what became of them.

  6. I also wondered what became of his family. He was an interesting character, no doubt. Out of curiosity, why the research on Black Bart, Jeannie? Have you written a book based on him or close about him in another character?

  8. What a story! Truth is stranger than fiction! I wonder why he never wrote his wife and family again, though. Must be a good story there!

  10. Loved your blog, Jeannie! Very entertaining. When I was a little girl, my family took us on a very rare vacation to Wisconsin Dells. I remember there being a shoot-out with Black Bart, and I can still envision the man in black hurtling out of the bat wings and into the street. Black Bart has stuck with me ever since!

    But surely he made right with his family after stealing all that gold!!

  12. Good afternoon, wow, this is such an interesting story! Thank you so much for sharing it with us. Have a great day and a great week.

  13. That is quite a story about Black Bart. It makes me want to spend more time looking into the history of other notorious people, men and women. I love the realism of it. Many thanks, Jeannie.

  14. Stories like this one are things I’ve used in history classes. The story of the James Gang being caught in a cave, being trapped, and the next morning they found the gang had disappeared. For a long time it was thought the guards had fallen asleep, but years later there was a drought and someone noticed the little pond at the back of the cave was low and there was a passageway to another part of the cave. In the other part of the cave was the strongbox from the robbery with the latch broken. So, the guards were vindicated as the gang went out through another entrance. The cave can be visited today and the strongbox is on view. The opening was enlarged and it can be visited today. I’d have to look at my notes as I’ve forgotten which cave it is.

  15. I love history and have always found outlaw stories fascinating! As many like Black Bart and The James Gang started out with a grievance with one large company or another! They both started sometime after the Civil War, which brings up questions about what really happened during that War??

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