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!

Young People Those Days!

Here is a bizarre story of "family values"... Sung about so ably, by no less than the Eagles on their second album, called Desperado... 

Perhaps the sorriest and most devoted criminal family in the "Old West" was the Dalton clan.  FOUR out of ten brothers became legendary outlaws. One sister was believed to have harbored them between jobs. So 5 out of 15 children in one family were involved in a crime ring. All children of a vagabond horse trader, you have to wonder who shaped their family values, which were very strong...

And who shaped their moral values, and sense of right and wrong?

Mine are the four larger images... others have been provided for comparison.

Related to the Youngers of the James-Younger gang, these fellows went bad after a bad family experience in law enforcement, when their older brother Frank was killed in a gun battle in the line of duty as a U.S. deputy marshal. Grat and Bob had tried to follow in Frank's footsteps, but some kind of resentment inspired them to blend law enforcement with whiskey smuggling and stealing horses. This evolved into a crime spree which stretched from Kansas to California. It has never been clear what triggered the reversal, and in fact their story has never really been well told. I believe the mastermind, if you could call him that, was the more genteel Bill Dalton, who always seemed to be around- but at an arms length to their crimes. As the map above illustrates, Bill was stationed in Bartlesville, which turned out to be in the very center of Dalton depredations. It is believed that he planned the robberies, and Flora Quick, aka "Tom King" was the messenger to his brothers.

 Note that top hat! And the postmortem photo... Often the outlaws sported facial hair when on the warpath... and this how they were often "captured" for posterity.

It was believed but never proven that the Daltons sometimes found refuge at their sister Eva's home in Meade, Kansas, which was later discovered to be equipped with a secret passageway and an underground hide-out. Interestingly, one of these tintypes (above) features Eva Mae and Bill together... almost as if they were illustrating some kind of invisible alliance. Bill had presented a dignified profile while living in California... where the railroads had made themselves a popular target for social justice radicals. As their outspoken enemy, he had become a tempting political target. And all hell broke loose when his brothers came out to visit, and a train was robbed, thus drawing suspicions and ruining his image.

After the band was totally wiped out, and Eva was exposed, she moved away from Meade, and depleted of outlaw siblings, she moved to Kingfisher, Oklahoma and supposedly went straight.

Grat was the heavy lifter in the gang, and the slowest. He was apprehended in California for a robbery attributed to the Daltons but managed to escape. One legend has him leaping out of a train window which was crossing a trellis... a la D. B. Cooper, never to be seen again... but his actual escape was not so dramatic. This left Bill, "the smart one" to face the law and the railroad, but in fact they had no evidence with which to prosecute him.

Eventually all of the outlaw Daltons moved back to familiar ground... The Oklahoma Territory, where they devoted themselves to making a name for themselves even bigger than the Younger gang- their cousins... and that led to the wildest scheme of all, of robbing TWO  banks at once... in their old hometown, Coffeyville, Kansas.

Their crimes were fairly well coordinated and expedited,  and included daring bank and train robberies, led by Bob Dalton, who depended a great deal on younger Emmett as a dependable man in a tight spot. Always posing as an innocent businessman, with firm alibis, Bill did not emerge as an outlaw until his brothers were either killed or captured. And that was the result at Coffeyville, which was a classic case of criminal over-confidence and the old saying "loose lips sink ships."  Four of the gang were killed in a few minutes, and only Emmett survived, to face a lengthy prison sentence.

The Coffeyville disaster seems to have brought out the hurt pride of Bill, who was seemingly determined to avenge his brothers, and the family outlaw reputation. When he did finally emerge, after the Dalton brain trust had led to death and disaster, he was allied with another infamous outlaw, who had been associated with the Daltons... Bill Doolin. Together they started an outlaw network famously known as the "Wild Bunch."

Bill Doolin

For some reason, in this collection there were three, very rare tintypes of Bill Doolin, who always considered himself a higher grade of highwayman. Pictured in two of them are an attractive brunette, perhaps his wife, Edith, and even one of their children. The photo of him without a hat may be with a different, prettier woman, who could certainly be a sister of the later one... who looks a little hardened. Another loving, family man.

 

Emmett Dalton

The only one of the "bad" brothers to survive was Emmett, the youngest and perhaps the wildest,  who got out of prison and like many rehabilitated outlaws, (Frank James, Bob Ford, Al Jennings) became something a celebrity. He married his old sweetheart, Julia Johnson, a veritable outlaw queen, and moved to Hollywood, where he played himself in an early Western movie.

So comprehensive was this collection, it even had tintypes of the women who followed the Dalton men.  One, Flora Quick Mundis, was even thought by some to have continued to plan and execute train robberies after the Daltons had been wiped out. Jailed numerous times, and always "escaping," she dressed like a man and was known among outlaws at "Tom King." Researchers have connected her to both Bill and Bob Dalton. Legend has her dying from gunshot wounds in Arizona. Historians have conflated her with a prostitute called "China Dot," who was a favorite among Chinese railroad workers, and who was killed in a murder-suicide in Clifton Arizona. Her lover was the former mayor, who did not explain their unhappy demise, other than four well placed bullets in the aging courtesan. She was almost immediately identified as the legendary Tom King, once an Indian Territory terror, known to all the famous lawmen of that region.

Flora Quick Mundis

 

The photo on horseback is the only known photo of one of the Wild West's wildest women.

Said to have been a spoiled brat from Missouri, she hated school and sought the company of the fast crowd, marrying a man twice her age and then squandering her inheritance. Teaming up with a local madam, she went into wholesale horse-stealing and eventually prostitution, and according to some western writers, hooked up with the Doolin-Dalton gang. These outlaw love relationships were hardly ever made official or known to the outside world. But given enough time, they sometimes revealed themselves..

Julia was Emmett's long lost & found love, Lucy may have been the mysterious Minnie, alias "Eugenia Moore" in the famous photo of Bob Dalton. (below)

Not from my collection, provided for illustration.

Semi-faithful Julia Johnson went through a couple of relationships while she waited for Emmett to get out of prison. Then she goaded her second husband into a deadly gunfight which left her free and ready- conveniently when Emmett was released after 14 years.  This was an early release she reportedly campaigned for. Her sister Lucy Johnson was supposedly one of Bob Dalton's main groupies, and may also have been known as "Eugenia Moore"... The woman on the far right (above) with Bob Dalton has never been identified... but I think she and my tintype (center) are probably Julia's sister Lucy, pictured on the left touching heads with Julia. (It is just as possible the unidentified young woman is Julia.)

There were many, many secrets... kept successfully till now. Many an outlaw romance went unannounced and forever undocumented. Rumors were the best leads that writers were going to get. But when Emmett came back for Julia, he verified the Dalton-Johnson connection... and bolstered the rumors of the Bob Dalton - Lucy Johnson (her sister) affair, which may well have been the epicenter of the Dalton crime wave. Bob had killed his law enforcement career when he abused his badge and killed a boy friend- of his female interest... who was probably Lucy, with whom he later fathered a child. She was actually his cousin, known to the family as "Minnie" and raised in his own home by his mother. Minnie may have used several aliases while she served as the Dalton advance team, setting up food, transportation and shelter for them on their "jobs." But not long afterward Lucy/"Minnie" died, and her sister Julia took custody of her child, and kept the familial fires burning.

And they will always burn with so many tragic mysteries obscuring this counter-cultural clan. Today the Internet is rich with wanna-be Dalton kin, arguing the validity of their various blood relationships... so many folks that find significance in familial attachment to these long dead robbers and killers.

One gentleman went to great lengths and outrageous expense, placing tombstones, publishing bogus histories, just to establish his own clan's claims of daring Dalton due, only to be smeared with even greater zeal by those determined to protect the sanctity of Daltondom. The arguments by Daltondom are that the old interviews and official records do not support the Phillips family claim of direct kinship. The question seems to rotate around a spurious daughter known as "Bea," or Elizabeth Dalton, who supposedly married into the Phillips and lost contact with her outlaw brothers. Well, you couldn't blame her for that!

It was an outrageous invasion of Dalton family heritage... a crime against decency and American history, and in its own way, a fitting and criminal tribute to the greatest outlaw family in the Old West. But it is stunning what some people might do, to forever establish themselves as a wart on a bump on a footnote in history!