Connecting The Dots: Isabel Lyon's Invisible Trail

 Isabel Lyon

“The telephone was dead.” Those were the ominous words of Clara Clemens in her nostalgic book about her father, Mark Twain. But these words were about an emergency concerning her mother, a little explored incident in 1904 during Olivia Clemens' dying days while supposedly convalescing in Italy. And these words naively introduced a mystery, that during Olivia Clemens' death throes, the family discovered that their telephone lines had been cut. It could have been the inspiration for any number of television murder mysteries. But it was real. And as poor Olivia suffered another of her deadly heart attacks, the family struggled through the Italian village where they were staying to get word to a doctor to come immediately.

And still the doctor never came.

Later they discovered that someone had inexplainably locked the entry gate to their compound on the outskirts of Florence. The doctor who finally answered their desperate pleas could not enter their villa to give assistance and after waiting some time he eventually gave up and left. Olivia barely survived, and the incident led to her decline and death a few months later. And the Clemens soon returned to America to bury her and gladly forget the string of dysfunctions and tragedy they left behind.

But it seemed to me, as I read Clara's account, that someone wanted Olivia to exit the stage, sooner than later, and did everything they could to assist her demise. What followed after their return to America was enough suspicious activity to launch a Hitchcock movie.

 Clara Clemens in Austria with her piano teacher, Leschetitzky. 

They found her hands were too small- she switched to Voice.

Sweet, devoted Clara mentioned this terrifying series of deadly coincidences as an aside in her book, which was intended to add some color to their tragic misadventure, but strangely, trustingly, she never really tried to connect the dots of these and other Twain family mysteries. At least not publicly. Caught up in the glow of Mark Twain's worldwide aura, Clara had spent a lifetime alternately testing and adoring her father, and was content now to launch his legacy higher onto the Olympus of mankind's greatest achievers. And that would require more than a little willful ignorance. Making sense of the “Twain mysteries” as I call them, would have been counter-productive to her grander purpose, and in fact no writers of Twainiana have ever been so inclined. Nobody has ever wanted to connect those ominous dots.

So that is why you are here now, as I propose to do just that. I have no claim to know what happened... but I do know what was summarily ignored for over one hundred years. And some useful facts have emerged since then which make the Twain narrative twist and contort into a much darker saga, punctuated with mismanagement, bankruptcy, premature deaths of two of his children, sabotage of Olivia's health, a staff who surgically embezzled him, and an unethical biographer who embalmed Twain's image as he squeezed every drop of blood from it.

And then there was the great-granddaughter who was adopted out and almost never knew she was a descended from “the Lincoln of American Literature.” The true Clemens family legacy falls way below the majestic literary Olympus which was constructed for posterity.

These and other sad facts are the “rest of the story” as Paul Harvey might have said, and may be the very best example of how public images of prominent figures have always been manufactured. And this is no great cultural revelation. But MARK TWAIN? Really?

Yes, and we have Albert Bigelow Paine to thank for our delusions.

This will be no short essay. I have read dozens of books and studied this subject from the viewpoints of several first hand witnesses. And I do not believe in coincidences. At least not strands of them that light up like a Christmas tree, with no apparent source. Everybody loves or at least knows of Mark Twain. Or they think they do. But actually nobody does. Maybe his family, and his biographer, but then the rest of us were limited in understanding due to insufficient data.

Also to be considered, when the general public has decided that it will worship, it willfully, blindly ignores all distractions, including reality. Modern politics proves that point. Mark Twain was a prophet of modern Agnostic philosophy. His religion and vision of America became a moral substitute among the learned, and he became the magnetic demi-god of the New Age; The Everyman's conscience of Western culture. He was and still is largely untouchable.

So here I dare...

 Sam without his hair. Below is a cartoon illustrating

 that he was known to cut it off when abroad.

His actual name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and in many ways he paralleled another huge historical figure who has also stood the test of time. Like Jesus, of whom he was patently dubious, he is most-often remembered by a name he was not born with. He was most famous for non-conformity and being disrespectful of the status-quo and the authorities who imposed it. His words upset as many people as he ingratiated, and yet he made a worldwide impact with them. His real life story has several versions, and has been obscured by well-meaning handlers, and he has been elevated and argued over ever since.

But Mark Twain was no Jesus, perhaps his antithesis. Yes, he was a sort of “anti-Christ.” He struggled with his Faith and sported many misgivings about God all of his life, and wrote rather freely about them. His amazing, wonderful wife protected him, by protecting the public from his most heretical tirades. “Mark Twain” may have been his most prolific and creative when launching his irreverent attacks, chapter and verse, challenging religious convention, literally speaking for the Devil in the first person, becoming... the Devil's advocate. Of course, not believing in God, he did not believe in the devil either. Religion and hyperbole were inseparable.

Letters from Earth, a collection of his most daring blasphemies, was categorically censored by everyone who consulted him, and probably exacerbated dear Olivia's heart troubles. Scandal and controversy within the family over this and other later writings led to more than a domestic dispute. So upset had Livy become, with his very appearance, that towards the end of her battle for life, Sam was forbidden by her doctor to even enter her bedroom, and had to communicate through a medium. And that was usually daughter Clara; the middle child, the trusted messenger between her parents, and a resourceful liar when necessary. Clara protected Olivia and probably extended her life by some months. And Clara became our contact with the real Clemens behind the “Paine” curtain.

Livy had been warned of Sam's apostasy long before the children came, and had suspended her qualms about them. In fact when he courted her, her parents had not approved, and had turned down his proposals. Even Olivia was not receptive at first, and yet Clemens would not give up and wore them all down. The third time had been the charm, as Sam Clemens more deftly camouflaged his unconventional theories, and learned to talk about “God” in a more general sense. He was a master of hyperbole. Like many women in love, no doubt Livy assumed he would change with time. And Sam had no idea that he had met his match.

Olivia Langdon was the daughter of devout Quakers who had been active in the famous “Underground Railroad” before the Civil War. She was courageous and knew what it was like to put her faith on the line, even break the law for a higher Law... to obey God rather than the traditions of men; to risk her own freedom as she helped others to gain theirs. Sam and all of his friends and associates lifted Olivia up as a near saint, a bastion of integrity, and Samuel Clemens' most valuable friend and asset.

In contrast to Livy's strength of character, Sam had enlisted in the Confederate militia in Missouri and then abandoned his company after the first skirmishes with Grant's troops. (Later he found serendipity in this when he spoke before then President Grant) He fled the war with his older brother who had been appointed as secretary of the Nevada Territory... by Abraham Lincoln. When North fought South, Sam went West. Clearly Sam was conflicted by the war to his inner core... as any thinking person would have been, and found refuge by exotic travels. This would become a habit of a lifetime.

Accompanying his stalwart brother Orion, he was to serve as the secretary to the secretary. But soon he was camping in the mountains and panning for gold, between writing scandalous editorials for local newspapers. That was when he discovered his alter-ego and gave it a name; Mark Twain. Sam would coin the words, Mark would suffer the consequences.

By the time Livy met him, he had been all over America, even to Hawaii, Europe and the Holy Land. He had braved the seas and the Rocky Mountain wilderness, mined for gold, written to entertain a national audience, learned how to charm people and miraculously to make a living with his gift of sarcasm and wit. And he was sure beautiful Olivia could not resist him. Unfortunately for her inner peace, he was right. And noble, long suffering Olivia took on a lifetime project which ended (for her) in frustration and confusion in a foreign land.

And perhaps her end was assisted by an unseen hand. The pure light of Olivia Clemens- darkened by the cryptic mysteries within the family have become an irresistible fascination for me.

 Olivia Clemens, from a detail in a tintype of

 her with daughter Clara and her boyfriend.

Sam had played along with Olivia's unorthodox Christianity... and they coexisted amiably with their irreconcilable opinions, and each was allowed his own self-styled Faith. But as they raised their three daughters, the differences eked out. Clara wrote of how she and her sisters, even as children, spent long conversations reasoning with their father, who argued freely with them... as an equal. You might say his was a childlike disbelief. Everyone, his wife, his best friend, his daughters, all eventually docked in his harbor of deep and inconsolable doubts. Clemens shouldered psychological wounds from the loss of his younger brother in a tragic steamboat accident. THAT was when he knew “God” made mistakes. He had seen great poverty and injustice in the world, and had no confidence in mankind and even less in any god. He often castigated the “damned human race,” as he claimed that he could do a better job running the Universe. “Free Will” made absolutely no sense, if “God” was all powerful. Sam created monuments in his mind to his colossal questions, and loved dancing around them with his family and friends. In their darkest moments, neither really knew what they believed.

But as smart as he thought he was, Clemens continuously made stupid, costly judgments. Terminally hapless at business, most of his attempts at investment, and there were many, had ended in failure and left him near bankruptcy. He had been forced to drag his family all over the world, partly on a laborious lecture circuit, partly running from mounting debts back home, but mostly running from accountability as always from publishers, and his adoring public. For a dozen years Livy held their little band together in various refuges in Europe, while Sam went back and forth, playing cat and mouse with his American financial quagmire. Meanwhile the transplanted family was inevitably, strongly influenced by the more liberal European style of Christianity.

At the same time, Sam Clemens wove a roguish network of American artists and writers, intellectuals and inventors, who followed the more bohemian philosophies of Walt Whitman and company. Concepts of religion in this free society were individualized and vastly subjective and self-suiting. Sam's irreverence found fertile ground and his doubts evolved into revolutionary spiritual assertions. And everything became toxic with his family and his public once he put these ideas down in a manuscript. The spiritual lines were drawn.

As the Clemens daughters grew up, they found compromise between their parents in a new denomination, Christian Scientism... and similar attempts to repackage religious faith. Mark Twain became more and more outspoken in his unbelief, and even wrote scathing attacks on Christian Science, after oldest daughter Susy embraced it. Thou shalt have no other gods before me...

But for the girls these unresolved questions only made Sam Clemens a more adorable project for the entire family. And their efforts were not in vain. He always seemed to find the most plausibility for hope in mankind and Eternal things when around them. But when his oldest daughter Susy perished prematurely in 1896, from spinal meningitis, at just twenty-four years old, neither marrying nor bearing children, Sam abandoned any pretense of faith with a vengeance.

 Albert Bigelow Paine traced Clemens' relentless

 cynicism back to the death of his beloved Susy.

The family was in transit at the time, returning in groups after a world tour. They had left Susy behind in the States, and learned while returning that she was ill. Olivia and Clara were aboard ship and were too late, but on their way. Sam had to console himself back in England, and did a poor job of it... writing profusely of his regrets and failures as a father.

“My remorse does not deceive me. I know that if she were back I should soon be neglectful of her as I was before- it is our way.”

I feel sure that he was trying to comfort himself by the use of “our,” when the girls would have said for him to speak for himself. The self-absorption was HIS way. What had started with the cynicism of a world traveler, became militant anger towards mankind and the god who made it, and himself of course. And as his family fell apart, Sam Clemens' soul was exposed, with no stable personalities to guide his drifting raft.

After realizing what a soul-grinder he was putting his grieving wife through, Sam had a temporary change of heart, as he often would do. Never quite positive about his most outrageous postulates, Sam would often, if only momentarily, reverse himself. He often spoke and wrote of “Providence” and eternal damnation, and quoted the Bible. As much as he tried, he could never successfully expunge his own personal Judeo-Christian paradigm.

While in Florence, one of his love notes during the medical restraining order illustrates his vacillations: “I do love you so my darling, and it grieves me so to remember that I am the cause of your being where you are. I WISH- I WISH- but it is too late. I drove you to sorrow and to heart-break just to hear myself talk. If I ever do it again when you get well I hope the punishment will fall upon me the guilty, not upon you the innocent.”

One of Clemens' pet peeves was how God allowed bad things to happen to good people. To Clemens, the only kind of God worth believing in was one who gave you favor in this life. Especially if you were anyone who actually tried to live a good life. There should have been rewards for persons like Livy, for good behavior. As he lived on, he became convinced that Earth was all the hell this universe needed. Of course that is what every unbeliever is counting on.

But tormented with doubt and grief, he capitulated and wrote Livy that he had been wrong, that he would never question God or the concept of heaven again, that he was grateful to know Susy's final destination, which they would all someday share. Well, most of them. But then shortly he would revert to that destination being mere dust, a mere wishful fantasy. A human contrivance. Still the comfort of it was irresistible. Sam could never resist any heart-warming pleasure. He loved to hate and punish and he loved more to forgive and indulge.

In the end, Clemens' unresolved anger, depression, and written blasphemies pushed Olivia away into a heartbreaking relational crisis. For her loving soul there was the horrifying realization that Sam was probably never going to share her eternal Heaven. Meanwhile they had raised their precious, but fragile daughters in this sieve of religious confusion. Conversely she must have been reminded of the mental security of the Faith of her childhood, and the lifetime of refuge it had provided. What slippery slope had she leaped down into? What had she done? It was too much. Her heart began to fail. And her bedroom became her only refuge from him and his relentless, godless rebellion. The doctor had forbidden him to even talk through the door. This was no way to sustain a marriage, or a life. I contend that she died of a broken heart.

And among them already there may have been an “agent provocateur” who was planting seeds of mayhem, and even gently manipulating events towards a tragic end. Grief-stricken herself, Clara would not have imagined the complex struggle going on in the household, but years later, if she had any powers of analysis, with hindsight she would have seen it clearly. But her own book never connected the dots. Why she never did is another mystery. 

 Isabel Lyon, Sam Clemens, and his daughter Jean.

The Clemens had hired a new member for the Twain entourage around 1902, over a year before they left for Italy. Clever and attractive, Isabel Lyon had been a neighborhood friend who Sam had found to be an excellent game-partner at parties. The picture above appears to have been taken early in their friendship and probably before her employment, perhaps around 1900. When they realized that extra assistance would be necessary to fulfill Olivia's routine roles in the function of their family, which included serving as her and Sam's personal secretary, Isabel was ready and available and a welcome addition. She came highly recommended by friends. But later on Lyon was unveiled to be cunningly manipulative, instinctively Machiavellian, ruthlessly ambitious, and worshipful if not in love with Mark Twain.

Knowing that in Sam Clemens' last days, Lyon would be sued as a conspirator in a stunning embezzlement scheme, and that the Clemenses grew to believe she was an evil influence on the Twain enterprise, all while she built herself a lavish lifestyle at Clemens' expense, makes one think again about those mysterious severed telephone lines. That inopportune locked gate; Life-saving first aid blocked for Mark Twain's dying wife.

After Olivia's death, Isabel's largely unseen hand relocated Clemens, created and furnished a new mansion called Stormfield to her tastes, as well as a wonderful smaller cottage for herself. Calling him “the King” she surrounded him with parasites, took over his public image and most importantly, created a joint bank account. And quietly, carefully she conspired with a doctor to send Jean, Sam's youngest, away to an institution because of her epilepsy, “for his protection.”

During Isabel Lyons' term of service, Mark Twain's life became that of a glamorous yet dependent puppet, where all of Clemens' self-indulgent tendencies became his undoing. Looking back on this unfortunate time from our perspective, it is hard not to condemn all of the people involved. In fact they all did, at least blame one another, with Samuel Clemens himself taking the blame and shame of it all in his old age.

Always given to fast company, Clemens had taken on an unsavory professional clique and a superficial social circle to fill his life. What followed should have been a national scandal, except that Clemens had employed the most able of publicists, his biographer and ultimate trustee, Albert Bigelow Paine. Paine was cunningly able to seal the lid on all things Twain, and protect that legacy to this very day. That is another story of deception and intrigue.

Albert Bigelow Paine entered Sam Clemens' life as if called by Providence. A talented man himself, Paine was ambitious where Clemens was phlegmatic, cautious where the great author was reckless, in effect the common sense and business mind that the legendary bard had always lacked. Paine had just successfully written and marketed the biography of Thomas Nast, the most famous and influential political cartoonist in the world. When Mark Twain sent his compliments, he moved in for the kill. Charming and ambitious, he swiftly proposed and sealed a deal to write Twain's biography. Partnering with Samuel Clemens was just the beginning of a long series of beneficial encounters, and served to attract similar publishing contracts with the creme of Clemens' associates, the leaders of various high profile professions; the most famous actress, the most famous Texas Ranger, even his own award-winning version of Joan of Arc, all while tailoring, pressing and riding Twain's coattails.

Albert Bigelow Paine is really the central figure in this story, and was probably the collector if not photographer of many of the images on this website. Although he wrote volumes about others, and children's books and novels and poetry, little was written about him. In fact there were good reasons for this. A bigamist and forger, his personal life would have inspired an American comedy scandal, but instead he has become a forgotten phantom. Few Twain writers have ever really been curious about him, and those who were chose to shrug him off as the black sheep of an elite American cabal. But it was Paine who gave us the Mark Twain we think we know. The Clemenses trusted him completely, never aware of his character issues, and left him in custody of the Twain legacy. Paine was the proverbial “fox in the hen house.”

And Albert Paine often found himself in league with Isabel Lyons. But he played the field, giving special attention to Clara and later to Jean Clemens, who came to depend on him greatly. Eventually Lyon and Paine accused one another of all kinds of mischief, their final assessment being of mutual contempt and distrust. They were both right. But Paine played his hand more effectively, and ended up not only the trustee of Mark Twain's literary legacy, but he was given the highest tribute by Clara Clemens in her book.

Clara dedicated her insightful book titled My Father Mark Twain to him, and she wrote “affectionately” that he “ ...understood my father and faithfully demonstrated his love for him...” Paine's complete hijacking of Twain thus became the sanctioned spin on Samuel Clemens for way over one hundred years. It took that long for scholars to detect what may have been the most successful and misleading handling of a major literary force in American history.

Paine and Twain lived next door to one another, traveled together. Entertained together... Encouraged by Isabel Lyon, Mark Twain was going everywhere, winter and summer, in his trademark whites, establishing the iconic Twain image we all recognize. He often took along charming young girls, adolescents, to ride in his buggy and add sweetness and innocence to his personal and public space. His daughters had been his angels in the flesh, and after they were grown he adopted new ones, called “Angelfish,” to keep his breaking, lost soul refreshed. Sam depended on the tangible innocence in these girls to represent true goodness and purity, things he almost refused to believe in. Strangely, little girls became his objects of worship, his gods. Just like his idol, Joan of Arc, in Clemens' “Angelfish” he found persons whom he could admire and trust, give the benefit of the doubt, and place his faith in. 

 Twain proudly escorted his "Angelfish" like

 they were his grandchildren. He never lived to

 enjoy any of his own.

Finally Clara began to realize that Isabel was evolving from Goldilocks into the Big Bad Wolf. Over time she began to be suspicious of poor Jean's three year banishment, her father's supposed detachment, and Isabel's obvious control over the whole Clemens household. Twice she initiated an investigation, and twice her father stopped it and protected his trusted secretary. Meanwhile Lyon had attached herself to Ralph Ashcroft, a much younger man who had recently taken the job as Clemens' financial manger, but who had all the charm of a boa constrictor. They were soon to be engaged, and in short order Ashcroft had designed a three-way partnership between Clemens and Isabel and himself. Amazingly, each shared an equal percentage of the ownership, making Ashcroft and Lyon an overwhelming majority. Clemens not only signed on to this egregious incorporation, but also gave them complete power of attorney to all of his assets. Strangely, this man of disbelief placed his complete faith and trust in these two scoundrels.

But Albert Paine was watching the new partnership with sharp concern, and eventually Clara also began to wonder, more forcefully, where all of her father's money was going... And after a surprise audit it became clear that Ashcroft and Lyons had routed an excessive amount of money into his business interests and her own house and clothes and lifestyle. In lieu of more accountable financial compensations, such as royalties or commissions, they arranged a steady flow of cash “gifts,” while sometimes refusing funds to Sam and the family.

Quickly the two were fired and sued, and eventually publicly chastised for their malfeasance. Clever as ever, they soon got married, so as to prevent either from having to testify against the other.

Isabel Lyon had convinced everyone interested that Jean's exile was absolutely necessary, due to her dangerous epileptic fits, more for the peace and happiness of Sam Clemens than for Jean. Letters to and from Jean had been intercepted, removing her from the dialogue, while “Angelfish” were recruited and used to fill his emotional void. Clemens was being handled like a fragile emperor, and with Lyon's management, nothing and no one would threaten his utopia. After a good deal of discussion and consternation, the Clemenses finally decided that Jean should be brought home. But her doctor was adamant to adhere to Lyon's program. Finally Sam managed to wrestle her away and bring her home “temporarily.” Jean quickly adjusted, working a garden, riding her horse, thankful to have her life back and having a great time. She was finally home and she never went back.

 Jean only enjoyed a few months of home with her 

family, after years of separation due to her epilepsy.

But Lyon became furious. Her plan, her authority, her control was suddenly in jeopardy. Even today, knowing what we know, we do not know what it was that caused Isabel to persecute Jean so. But it was obvious from her reaction that the two could not share Sam Clemens, could not be in the same organization. What had transpired between them? What did Jean know that made Isabel so uncomfortable? Surely Jean's seizures would not have frightened her so much. Whatever it was, it was not long before Isabel was packing her belongings, filling suspicious trunks full of undocumented contents, as she spent a mysterious time rummaging upstairs in the Clemens attic. At the same time treasured Clemens heirlooms disappeared, including a string of carnelian beads, confirming that she was indeed a thief. And since she had her own cottage, why the upheaval? It appears that she had been living in the Clemens home, and was moving out because Jean was moving in...

Watchful Clara got a key to one of Isabel's trunks and was insisting that it be checked, and once again Sam protected Lyon from embarrassment. The pattern of outrage and then indulgence on Clemens' part must have been as infuriating as Lyon's brazen predation. Perhaps Clemens had given her things... family things, that he did not want Clara to see. It was a mess, and it is possible that Clara wanted to wash her hands of the whole thing then, understanding that her father's bark was much more cutting than his bite, and detecting a basic lack of conviction of his drastic accusations. By now he had characterized the duo as a “criminal couple,” calling Lyon a “liar, a forger, a thief, a hypocrite, a drunkard, a sneak, a humbug, a traitor, a conspirator, a filthy-minded and salacious slut...” It was hard to tell whether his name-calling was the reaction to a personal betrayal or the rantings of an old man angry with himself. It was probably both.

Ashcroft soon married Lyon, for reasons of convenience and legal protection, and they planned to immediately leave for England on a honeymoon. They were warned not to leave the country, but they could not be stopped and sailed across the pond for refuge, where they found none. When they arrived in London, they had to face Jean's publicized telephone conversation, where she said flatly that Isabel Lyon had stolen money from her father and diverted it into her own house. This international humiliation had to sting, especially coming from someone considered crazy by the indignant newlyweds. It had to be a hollow vacation, with so much awaiting back home. So there was nothing to do but return and face the consequences. The newspapers followed every new development.

Then it got ugly, as only wealthy and powerful and artistic persons can get. Sam sent his lawyer Charles Lark and Jean, now a functioning adult and trusted family member, to confront Isabel Lyon. One can only imagine the fire in Jean's eye, as she was assigned to negotiate Lyon's eviction. Clemens had decided that he would renege on his gift of the cottage, and the attached acreage. He refused their request that he soften his accusations of theft and deception. The Ashcrofts did not savor becoming the goats of Mark Twain's pasture. There would be no place to hide, no way to save their reputations.

Lark tried to handle the conversation, and Jean was intended to serve only as a witness. Clemens was offering a generous cash deal, $4000 to get rid of her forever. Lyon fought to stay and keep her home. Lark threatened that her obstinateness would only further anger Mr. Clemens and result in criminal prosecution for her and her husband. She pleaded innocence, but finally she apologized and committed to repay anything she owed and even agreed to sign the deed of her cottage over.

When they returned with the paperwork, Lyon fell apart and became an emotional wreck. She begged Lark for sufficient time to relocate... at least two months, and he agreed. When Lark stepped outside and told Jean, she objected and they reduced the time to just six weeks. This may have been Jean's spitefulness taking over after all the misery Lyon had caused her, but any satisfaction it gave her was short lived. Literally.

Jean had publicly accused and humiliated the Ashcrofts, from America to England, and then personally made the terms of Lyon's eviction as hard as possible. If Isabel Lyon ever had a roaring nemesis, it was Jean Clemens.

Later it was the more stable Clara who went with Lark to Lyon's home, to consummate a six-week lease contract, to start the countdown for Lyon's imminent expulsion. Lyon's mother handled the meeting, claiming Isabel was ill. Armed with insufficient facts, she valiantly defended her daughter, until Clara was forced to burst out that Isabel was guilty, and there would be no grace given. Insults were exchanged, threats flew, but little satisfaction was ever extracted from Isabel Lyon for the years of sabotage she had waged on Sam Clemens and his family and estate. The beads were mysteriously returned.

What followed was a public scandal which played out in the newspapers, where Ralph Ashcroft wrote scathing public announcements smearing Clemens as incompetent and his daughters as frivolous and neglectful. Ashcroft especially attacked Clara Clemens as a free-spending, irresponsible, musical farce. When he discovered that Twain would not respond to a public format, he wrote and defended himself and his wife with abandon.

All of this unpleasantness, the emotional meltdowns, the breakdowns in trust and friendship, the public humiliations, the disintegration of the Twain reputation, the exposure of Sam Clemens as a fool and a narcissist, must have been a terrible assault on Jean, who had gratefully returned to the Clemens home with the highest of hopes, after years of isolation. She distracted herself with decorating the house, putting up a Christmas tree, buying gifts for the family. She must have missed her mother very much.

Then, on Christmas Eve, 1909, the family's longtime servant Katy Leary found Jean dead in her bath tub. The family supposed that she had died from a seizure, perhaps drowning, perhaps a heart attack. Jean was only twenty-nine. It could have been a routine head injury in the tub, a sip of eggnog, or a mountain of stress which triggered another seizure. And it might have been something much more evil. But she would never challenge or frustrate or embarrass Lyon again. And Lyon's greatest threat and possible adversary had been silenced. 

 

I cannot help but “string the beads”... the cut telephone wires, the closed gate, the banishment of Jean, the embezzlement, the theft of Clemens family treasures... and wonder if the death of Jean Clemens was not an act of rage or revenge by someone who had almost pulled off the commandeering of the Mark Twain household, and the considerable wealth that went with it.

Strangely, everyone accepted this sudden death as a blessing, since Sam had worried about who might look after Jean after his passing. Everything in the Clemens family orbited around Sam as the sun, so that it seemed fitting if their deaths should happen according to his time-table. No one ever connected the dots.

Within a short time, the legal battles with the Ashcrofts were over, and they were already separated, soon to be divorced. Clara was in Germany with the love of her life, finally married to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the famous Russian pianist. They would move around the globe and eventually have a daughter who could not cope with the swirling Clemens creativity and rootlessness, and she died almost destitute in California, quite young, probably of a drug overdose. And not before having a child out of wedlock and giving her up for adoption. An innocent little angelfish, perhaps saved from tragedy and godless searching. She would be mature and distant from it all when she would discover that she had been born into American royalty, albeit decadent. Grandmother Clara might have done her a great favor, finding her a safe refuge from the dark legacies of Stormfield.
 

Samuel Clemens was left alone with his thoughts. If there were dots to connect, Clara would have been the only one to do it. And she was thousands of miles away. Albert Bigelow Paine handled what little was left, to pal around with the Lincoln of American Literature. To play pool all night, smoke expensive cigars, and entertain the Who's Who of the world as they worshiped an American legend too important to even get out of bed. Paine did understand Samuel Clemens better than anyone, and perhaps he really did love him. And maybe Clara had been right, saluting the real “mysterious stranger” in their midst. Someone who was satisfied to serve and protect the beloved old storyteller, to tidy up his behemoth, garbled archive, and secure his legacy for generations. Someone who dared not attract attention to himself, who would subvert his own story as much as he would broadcast others.

 This likeness is sort of symbolic... an usual view of 

a "no frills" Sam Clemens... shorn if you will and kind

of naked to the world.

Strangely, Albert Paine was who and what Sam Clemens needed and deserved. After all the mystery and intrigue, and story telling and story stifling, and generations of enjoyment for millions... they served each other well. 

 For doubters- a comparison graphic showing known images 

of the individuals purported to be in this bizarre tintype.

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.

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!