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!