Connecting the Monolithic Dots- with no help!

 Son of the legendary Allan Pinkerton, it was William who relentlessly pursued Jesse James, and was blamed for the explosion which blew off the arm of the outlaw's mother. My photo of him is a full length portrait on a cabinet card, in the center, closer detail of his face on the left.

It was about a year ago when I became engrossed in the purchase of a lifetime... actually purchases of a lifetime, what you now peruse as “The Stubborn Flame,” which took almost a year to complete. During that time I became so excited and confident about my acquisitions that I began to reach out to some of those whom I presumed were the acknowledged “experts” in the field of American history, some local and some regional, to try to get some verification.

I soon found out how hard it was to get anyone to even look at my finds, much less agree about their importance. So many frauds were floating around in the stream of historical imagery that everyone I contacted reacted with ambivalence or skepticism. I have to add, that my earliest guess was that these tintypes were the remnants of some kind of law enforcement rogues gallery, probably of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Over time I learned that the images were formal portraits, and thus not the correct type to be “rogues.” Sadly, this incorrect assumption alone was enough of a red flag to distance my skeptics.

 Courageous and cunning Robert McParland, the undercover Pinkerton detective who ensnared a whole gang of terrorists in Pennsylvania. Mine is the tintype in the center.

I contacted some of the history authors whom I had met during my career as an artist, those whom I knew at least respected me as competent in my chosen field of historical illustration. Surely one of them could use some the images in their various projects... but again, aloofness and disbelief. I would have become discouraged, except the images just kept coming. There was no time to let my feelings interfere with the amazing collection gathering on my living room table. Soon I transported them to a safety deposit box, so sure was I about their value.

One of the authors I contacted was Max McCoy, by email. Mr. McCoy's name may not ring a bell, but his most famous creation will: Indiana Jones. I was not acquainted enough with him at the time to even know that! I approached him because he had published an article about Albert Bigelow Paine (Mark Twain's biographer) in The New Territory magazine, perhaps the first of its kind, which shed light into Paine's darker personal and literary secrets. Through the historical persons appearing in my collection, I had begun to deduct that my collection was possibly the combination of Paine's and Twain's life stories. It seemed unlikely at the time that either of the men might have known all of the famous individuals whose images were piling up each week. And I suspected that McCoy could help orient me to what I had discovered so far.

IF I am right, a very rare tintype, (center) probably made from

 an earlier Ambrotype, of the beautiful mother of outlaws

 Jesse and Frank James.

McCoy was fairly underwhelmed with my project, did not see what I saw, and our correspondence went no further. It kind of disappointed me, because Max McCoy was a treasure trove of knowledge about the pond I was wading in, and could have saved me a lot of time...and since his recusal I have learned just how much. There were several families or groups which the tintypes seemed to be representing, the Samuel Clemenses, the Pinkerton Detectives, and bizarrely, the Jesse Jameses... whom McCoy would have recognized immediately- what I have just recently figured out, that they were all ASSOCIATED in someway.

A tintype and a carte de visit of Jesse James
(numbered) as a boy and as an adolescent.
His ears made his visage unique.

It turns out Max McCoy had also written a book based on papers probably typed by Albert Bigelow Paine, which suggested that Mark Twain and Jesse James were actually known to one another, and Twain had considered writing the life story of the famous outlaw. This was not known to me until recently. McCoy took a charred and tattered old manuscript and finished what Twain or Paine had started. According to his account, rumors of Jesse James's death had also been greatly exaggerated, and he tracked down Mark Twain as an old man... long after he was supposedly dead, and proposed that the beloved folklorist interview him and tell the true story of his life and crimes.

Frank James and (Half) Sisters

The tintype on the far right (enlarged in the middle) is mine, 

now digitally restored- as are most of the images you see.

 They were so dingy that it took some enhancement for the 

average viewer to even consider the similarities that I saw. 

Three of the four individuals in the photo are very 

believably members of the James family.  These were such 

rare and personal photos, it means whoever was given 

custody had paramount access to the Jameses. They are 

evidence of a more than casual acquaintance with the 

most clandestine of clans.

Knowing this fact, that even Max McCoy thought that Twain and James were solidly connected, sure would have lit a fire under my dampened ashes... but I had to relocate to Bell County and other more urgent distractions, and the find of the century and the facts to substantiate it would have to wait for almost a year. 

Not only could McCoy have told me that Mark Twain was very interested in Jesse James, even invested in him, and might easily have compiled a stash of James family photographs, but that he also was a huge fan of detective stories, and wrote at least two lampoons of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The dots were begging to be connected.

It is also easy to imagine that the Pinkertons gladly submitted materials for Twain's books, after their patriarch Allan Pinkerton had passed away and no longer published his detective mysteries... at least until they saw with great angst that he had aimed his merciless sword of satire at them and their reputation. 

Jim Younger, the bruiser of the James-Younger gang. He was wounded but survived the "Great Northfield Raid" and was captured.
 

Now, after all of this time, I am connecting the dots. The major groups I had randomly purchased were all legitimately associated through Mark Twain! The rare if not impossible discovery that McCoy and others would not, could not believe, has grown geometrically, in size and importance. And even they would have to wonder, if I was going to imagine or fabricate a find of antique tintypes, that I would find, little by little, images of individuals who were not only related, but groups of people which were amazingly associated with one another... so much so that history has provided me the unmistakable provenance of the whole collection.

 

 Of "Dr. Livingston, I presume" fame, Sir Henry Stanley

 and his wife were often guests at the Clemens home.

The odds of finding so many related people, most of which I had never seen or heard of before, is actually less than the minute odds of finding hundreds of amazing and convincing look-alikes of the same people, all from one source, and all in a fairly short period of time. The odds of reality are slim, the odds of a parallel universe are much less.

 A very young Albert Einstein.

So I concede, this is a mountain of suggestive material... so I will no doubt be wrong about some of my identifications. But I will be right about hundreds of them... and so I propose to you that this collection is the most exciting, the most rare and probably the most revealing Victorian image gallery offered in modern times. Many of the persons you will see here, as famous as they are, may have never been photographed but a few times... In some case the photos here of them are better than any extant. I know that is a mouthful, and it sounds arrogant to me.. but after checking and re-checking, (because I hate rejection and I hate embarrassment even worse), I am sure they are what they are. I welcome your assessments and reactions. Just be courteous in your observations!