TRUE LOVE or killing time

One of the amazing resources we have today is the gift of the Internet. A person like me, planted in the hills of Texas, can research the latest and best information about anything, anywhere. And that resource just grows and grows. The latest and best info today might seem mundane and commonplace the next time you search the same subject... and sometimes you just search better and find a new and valued source of information, which can revolutionize everything.

BUT you have to be aware that some people are not careful with “facts” and make all kinds of unsubstantiated claims... which can be absorbed, but with skepticism. Still, sometimes they are merely the first to say the unmitigated truth... and it just sounds strange. The longer you mull over it, the more reasonable it sounds. My belief is that the Truth always comes out. And, this is crazy, the truth never sounds like the truth when you first hear it. Our lives are inundated with spin and urban legend and plain lies... So I try to warn my readers when something is merely unproven conjecture. I do not repeat things which I believe are false... unless it is to debunk them. But I also fight to keep an open mind... in case the truth is still trying to come out.

And sometimes, you step into a quagmire of conflicting and mostly unproven conjecture... all possible, none verified, and all irresistible.

Here is one such swamp... and my mucky attempt to wade through it and share the stench of history with you!

 THREE tintypes of Emmett Dalton... (numbered) certainly more than was known to exist!

Emmett Dalton became a published if not celebrated writer - and a construction contractor and even a western movie actor and producer when he got out of prison. After misspending is youth following his older brothers all over Oklahoma, robbing trains and banks and establishing himself as a legendary western anti-hero, Emmett settled down as a somewhat reliable citizen. He got married to an old outlaw flame named Julia Johnson/Gilstrap/Lewis, who according to his books had “waited” for him. His writings were a shameless effort to capitalize on his criminal career, and to sanitize his dear Julia, and to a greater degree, her sister Lucy, who, according to legend, had courted his brother Bob, the leader of their outlaw gang. Emmett's three outlaw brothers had all been killed, as well as all the other gang members, supposedly leaving Emmett and his wife as the only living witnesses and last word on things Dalton. His books became the Dalton legacy, and a powerful spin on their story.

Emmett wrote his self-serving version of the Dalton boy's gradual plunge into crime, one he blamed on a California express detective, the railroads and corrupt lawmen and prosecutors, and he also revealed how much the gang depended on intelligence provided by one “Eugenia Moore,” who Emmett claimed to have been from their old home place in Missouri (there were several), and whom he thought to be beautiful, intelligent, brave, energetic and loyal to the gang. Eugenia's outlaw genius and activity would have rivaled any female outlaw's in the Western Halls of Infamy.

Posing as a magazine writer, Eugenia scoped out railroad installations from the top to the bottom of Oklahoma, translated Morse Code transmitted over the telegraphs, discovered major money shipments, and rode alone on horseback over hundreds of miles to inform the gang wherever they were hiding in the wilds of the Great Plains. Whatever her real name, Moore's valued information led to several successful train robberies, most of which were executed within a day's ride from the known home of two sisters historically associated with the Daltons, Julia (b. 1870) and Lucy Johnson (b. 1868- d.1892?).

My tintype of Lucy Johnson.

Eugenia was also instrumental in the Dalton's survival after each holdup. After providing the gang with essential reconnaissance, she then expedited their get-away, gathering ammunition and fresh horses at a pre-planned destination. Then after several successful operations, Bob Dalton unexplainably sent her back to Silver City where they had met. The legend Emmett birthed was that she had gone there originally for her health, and that after her fling with Bob it eventually became her last resting place.  But when “Eugenia” reportedly faded out and retired to New Mexico, supposedly to die, so did the fortunes of the Dalton gang. Then fourteen years after the gang was exterminated at Coffeyville, Julia Johnson, her sister was still holding her gang membership card. She cleared all the clutter in her life and found Emmett, and they lived a life of celebrity and dark glamour, seeing the gang immortalized more than once in the cinema, and reinforcing much that never happened. It was "happily NEVER after."

Writers and researchers have since illuminated the lives of these two Texas girls from Grayson County who had arrived in northeast Oklahoma about the same time that the Daltons began their crime spree. Both of them had been born in Kentucky, but Emmett referred to the family as the "Texas Johnsons." Lucy was the prettiest, and supposedly the wildest, and there has been some speculation that it was she who had fallen in love with Bob Dalton and served the gang so faithfully. In Harold Preece's book called The Dalton Gang, Eugenia Moore is conflated with another outlaw woman, a cross-dressing prostitute named Flora Quick, and known as “Tom King,” who made a name for herself stealing horses and escaping several western jails, frustrating many of the lawmen in the Indian Territory.  But the one known photograph of Flora Quick does not jive with images which have surfaced in recent years of the Johnson girls. But Preece also noted that there was a Dalton “cousin” named “Minnie” Johnson who lived with the Daltons after their relocation to Coffeyville, and in fact, then Deputy U.S. Marshal Bob Dalton became jealous when she began to date a local moonshiner- and killed him! With shallow pretense. Supposedly acting on a warrant for his arrest, Bob tracked him down and shot him dead... and according to Emmett, even paid his funeral expenses. 

Emmett freely admitted his brother Bob's bad temper and capacity for murderous hate. But it was his other, true blue and loving side which won Emmett's allegiance, even to death, and perhaps "Eugenia's" as well.

Emmett said he met black-eyed Julia in 1887 when they were both sixteen, near Vinita. Although madly in love with her, he immediately left for California... on a lark. But it seems this would have been about the same time that Bob must have, if he ever did, fathered little Jenny Mae. Passed around like an unwanted yard ornament, Jenny Mae lived with several Oklahoma families who may not have had any blood kinship, but rather severed marital ties which leaned heavily on human decency.

One little, Two little, Three little Indians...

We KNOW that Emmett later married middle-aged Julia Johnson, who did not wait for him, not a second, but had been married a number of times while “waiting” for him to get out of prison. We know she had a sister named Lucy, who either died or skipped out and left Julia to raise her child... The child's name was Jenny Mae, (b. Nov, 1889) officially changed to Jenny Mae Gilstrap, when Julia married a Cherokee outlaw named Robert Gilstrap, some time (perhaps only eight months) after a Cherokee marriage in 1886 with a fellow named Albert (or Simon) White Turkey, who divorced her the Cherokee way when he became displeased with her. (He left her) It has been supposed that these marriages were to establish Julia's and Jenny's legal residency in the Indian Nations. Like all of Julia's lovers, Gilstrap was an outlaw and was gunned down on Christmas Eve, by another admirer of Julia's, a Delaware Indian named Frank Leno in Bartlesville in 1889.

Young, dumb and surrounded by bums, Emmett Dalton was hiding out at the Riley ranch in far west Oklahoma at the time, and far from the marrying kind. He was occasionally serving on his brother's posse, that of Deputy Marshal Grat Dalton. Brothers Bob and Grat had organized a lucrative horse stealing operation in the Osage Nation, where they were assigned as deputy marshal and posse man, respectively. They had worn out their luck and their reputations and were relieved of duty by 1890. Soon they were united with Emmett and his cowboy buddies and headed to Silver City, New Mexico, where they began their depredations. 

 

This was where Bob supposedly “met” “Eugenia Moore” and struck a romance... Eugenia was supposedly just 22 years old (Lucy would have been only 18) and there in New Mexico for her “health.” It was strictly a “chance” meeting. Supposedly she had no family. And there was no baby in tow. Records show that the parents of Lucy and Julia Johnson, freshly relocated from Texas, had indeed died in Bartlesville, OK within seven months of each other in 1891. Emmett seems never to have been aware that this old family friend “from Missouri” might have been the mother of Bob's child and sister of his sweetheart tucked away in Vinita... who by that time had been married at least twice, and cavorting with Indian outlaws. Emmett was either dumber than a dufflebag of hammers or a bold liar, or both.

If Eugenia Moore was just a creation of Emmett's, then he obviously salted her background information with several lies to hide her true identity. And if so, this ruse worked for over one hundred years.  No matter who she was, it would certainly follow a familiar pattern in Old West lore.  

Etta Place, "Rose of Cimarron," and other outlaw women, especially attractive ones, enjoyed fierce protection from both sides of the law, and permanent anonymity in the public record, for whatever roles they played in frontier crimes. This seems to have been considered the gentlemanly thing to do.  

Julia Johnson Gilstrap, still an outlaw, later married Robert Ernest Lewis, a saloon owner, who tried to market near-beer in the Osage Territory when alcohol was illegal. Once again one of her husbands gets shot to death, this time defying U.S. Marshals who were enforcing the prohibition of alcohol just days before Oklahoma is transformed from Indian land to the Indian Territory, subject to U.S. law. Indignant and inconvenienced, he killed one and one killed him. Julia continued to run the Saloon... but when alcohol was legal. It would be safe to say that Julia Johnson was attracted to danger and lawless types and that their sorry lives were sold cheap. And this last killing was just in time, because thanks to her efforts, Emmett was about to be released from prison. It was all so convenient!

Still, Emmett described her as the sweet, faithful beauty who waited for him, when she could have done so much better. Whether it was waiting or killing time, Julia was there when Emmett was ready for her. Neither of them ever admitted to who Eugenia Moore was... although it seems possible that the name was borrowed from the wife of a fellow gang member...

Richard L.“Dick” Broadwell of Hutchinson, Kansas was one of the desperadoes killed at the Coffeyville debacle. He met up with the Daltons while working on the Bar X Bar Ranch, after a romance fiasco where his “fiance” had absconded with all of his savings, a betrayal probably justified because he was a two-bit outlaw. He was known variously as “Texas Jack,” and John Moore. John Moore was to have met his new wife and new life in Ft Worth, but ended up broke and destined for infamy. I would bet his AWOL lover's name was Eugenia. That way every mention of this woman only extended the smear of someone who had betrayed the Dalton criminal network. The name was invented to tell an incredible story, if not the heart of the Dalton story, without casting any shadow on the real persons, now moved on, gone straight, but never having answered for their crimes.

One Internet writer contends that Lucy Johnson did not die as suggested by the Dalton legend, but found refuge in Canada until the coast was long considered clear and then she moved back to die of old age in Oklahoma. There are photographs to prove it, which have helped me identify my tintype of one of the Johnson girls... I believe to be Lucy, who took her wild story and dark secrets to the grave... and oblivion.

 Bob Dalton and "Eugenia Moore." One of several 

known photos of Bob...About 1889

It may have been shame. But it may have been an undying love. The kind of faithfulness that Emmett could only pretend about. But the kind of devotion that, along with the rest of his written adulation for his almost sister-in-law- outlaw Lucy, he knew to be true in someone's life- someone very close to him...

And no amount of money- or curiosity- seems to be sufficient to loosen up Dalton descendant's lips who might be able to verify ANY OF THIS!

A Series of "Coincidences"?

This is a website that believes in miracles. If you read and explore it, you will quickly see why. Over a year ago I began to acquire an extraordinary antique image collection... from an Internet auction, one at a time, which should wind up as a collection in the Smithsonian some day.

In the meantime, I am trying to research the images and figure out what I have. I have read scores of books... and sometimes they have explained what I have, as illustrated in this blog. Seemingly ordinary things and events described in biographies about the subjects have become historical proof of the images themselves. With no provenance, these “coincidences” have become the only evidence I have that this whole incredible project is what I think it is. Many images are explained in blog articles below... but for now here is the big picture of what I think you are looking at.

 

I BELIEVE, these images were once resting in the archives of Mark Twain, and later his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, who eventually had custody of all things Twain. Sam Clemens was a naturally curious man, and had many varied interests, and especially in human nature and current events, and no less Paine, his personal biographer and confidant. He opened doors for Paine, who wrote some very important biographies of the most important creative personalities of their time. I think, I THINK, that these two, separately and then collectively amassed a vast photo archive which eventually fell into “temporary” storage upon their deaths and sadly, into irrelevance and obscurity.

Authors are often sought out and courted to write important and not-so important biographies of the important and the self-important. They often consider these projects, and during the earliest stages of developing these biographies, many unrealistic ideas and goals are negotiated... and often the authors themselves start out with grandiose schemes... and probably the frills most often dreamed of- and just as often the most often dashed are the ideas, pipe dreams, of profuse illustrations in the proposed book. Everybody loves pictures.... except publishers, who hate paying for them, and thin them out mercilessly. Thus every manuscript for that matter, whether or not it ever gets published, is often accompanied with scores of pictures for illustration that will never be used; Pictures that have been promised by the authors to be returned to their sentimental owners... some day.

And that often never happens... for many reasons. Mostly because books take a long time to produce, and authors hold on to the loaned pictures hoping the publishers will change their minds, realize the value of the illustrations, and ask for them. By the time all hope for using the images has been dashed, the authors are working on new books, the image owners have gotten old and even died, and the images are forgotten about and sit waiting to be returned- indefinitely. They cannot be thrown away... or sold... and they sit in dark corners until the authors get old or die, and then are sold off at some estate sale, or hailed off, along with a mountain of unwanted books and papers and artifacts that are common in an author's personal archives. I am sure it is a story often repeated.

 Deeply personal and rare tintypes of famous families... in this case neighbors of the Clemens... I thought these (1 & 2) were of Mary Cassatt's mother... and was not surprised by the name of the book  in her lap when enlarged: The Practical Painter.

Now imagine what kinds of things MIGHT have been lurking in the neglected corners of the likes of Mark Twain or Albert Bigelow Paine, his biographer. Both men were world travelers, who were the first to be asked to consider the most exciting and prestigious projects in the country. And for every project they completed, scores went unfinished, saved for a “rainy day.” Both men knew the “Who's Who” of upper society, and the Counts and no counts... and either of them could easily have stashed the stunningly important image collection seen here.

Here is the wonderful part, for most of the people pictured in this Victorian image collection, there is a direct link or at least a possible link, to one or both of these men. I believe that the best intentions they had about returning this mountain of borrowed images evolved over decades into a truckload of dusty boxes which were disposed of, and thankfully, somebody looked at them and saw their value... probably a hundred years later. That is where I come in.

A lifelong history lover, I am an instinctive detective, and an artist with a brain for recognizing likenesses. It has been an exciting year, and after many hundreds of hours of research, this blog is finally starting to make sense. These are important images, I believe from personal collections of many famous people, once entrusted to two of the most important writers of the Nineteenth Century. But they had never been published. Not then, not until now, and right here.

You are looking into the secrets and riddles of our history, some deliberately, some by happenstance, and all once intended to illustrate American and some European biographies never written, or at least never published. Lawmen, outlaws, entertainers, politicians, writers, artists, and many more. There are many photographs, merely collected, for the visual delight they inspired. AND, I BELIEVE, some of them may have been the work of Albert Paine who was also a photographer.

Dive in!

Welcome to Albert's Secret Legacy Chest

You have surfed into a deep stream of mystery and creativity that will take both of us years to understand. 

 You could be an English Lit. Major and still never have heard of this author, who wrote the first biographies of America's creative brain trust, and much more...

So welcome- if you can take this first step into artistic and historical oblivion, I will take the lead the rest of the way. My mission is to bring obscure and yet important and fascinating objects to the surface, and perhaps add some nuances to history.

This whole blog is a wayward planet whose sun is a creative genius and mysterious player during the Victorian age... a man who for good reasons chose to live and die in relative secrecy, but who amassed a large legacy of American literature; Biographies of the premier creative giants of his age, Twain, Gish and Nast, scores of children's books, novels, and stories that could have inspired the Twilight Zone. And if I am correct in my theories... a mountain of photography of all the news makers of the day, some collected and some he photographed himself. 

I stumbled onto the photographs, seen here for the first time, and they have led me to one of the greatest untold networks of creative minds ever formed. Artists, detectives, writers, models, prostitutes, outlaws, spies... all providing the critical mass of an unseen Rolodex of the right-brained talents and iconoclasts of the Industrial Revolution. 

 His name was Albert Bigelow Paine, and after you get through with this blog you will never forget him. Because here we have thrown back the veil and uncovered his monument, which has been sleeping where he buried it, right under our deadened American noses.

Albert Bigelow Paine had many reasons for ducking behind his colossal literary monument, his unequaled diversity, his uncanny success, and instead trusting to time and saturation to place his flag at the peak of American cultural achievement.  But his unexpected death and poor planning, and perhaps poorer politicking, left his flag stuck in a bottomless chasm instead. 

Paine was at the very least a great talent, a passionate writer, but also a ruthless literary appropriator... even a thief, and a bigamist and a con-man... and probably a forger and well, we still don't know what all. He was the perfect example of the fine line between crime and art, of the creativity within man that can be used for either good or evil, and especially a prime example of right-brained abilities and how they have always run amuck without much understanding or appreciation, and way too much trust in this left-brained world.

His vapor trail left so much jealousy and resentment and suspicion that he had worn out any goodwill that might have preserved his legacy. A.B. Paine was the worst and the best of artistic genius, and after his star had fizzled, it had used up all the oxygen in its time slot. So you and I have never heard of this person.

And this is so strange, given that he was personally responsible for establishing the halls of fame for some of our greatest cultural icons... He may have been one of the first to understand fame and the art of managing it, of public relations, of creating and protecting a public image. But Paine had no one to do for him what he had done for others.  

Thus he planted essential flags of immortality on the Olympus of Americana, and then perished, his own considerable contributions to be forgotten, no museums, no magazine articles, not even a biography... 

Nothing but the same superficial bio, a paragraph, barely modified, repeated in footnotes in scores of publications and websites, too uninterested to investigate further.

We should have been asking hundreds of good questions, when someone could have answered them. What happened to Paine's early career of photography? The photographs? How did he manage to skirt prosecution of all of his crimes? How did he, an unknown writer from the Midwest, manage to ingratiate himself with the most famous people in the United States, in order to write their biographies? Operating in New York under an assumed name, hiding from his wife, and hiding his second family from his first wife... yet writing cutting edge manuscripts which gained the confidence of America's most popular bard, Samuel Clemens, and through him attracting the most enviable commissions in the country. How? How did he maintain and profit from that relationship long after Clemens was dead, continuing his magic with Clemens's only surviving daughter, who was convinced that he was the only person who ever "understood her father."

How did he continue to release previously unknown, unpublished works of Clemens, squeezing the last drop of blood from the dustbin of the Twain archive? Even finishing uncompleted works, combining, rearranging others... all while editing or writing sequel biographies of Twain, and award-winning books of his own? It was a magnificent whirlwind of commercial literary success not often experienced by any author of any age. And acknowledging all this, how could we then not know of him?

THAT is what this blog seeks to answer... and it will take some doing. The answers will come, not by reading something on the Internet, but from research and a good deal of creative deduction. It will take a writer and and photographer and a right-brained person like Paine to unlock the mysteries... and that... 

would be me.