Charles E. Boles was a nonviolent stagecoach robber in the American West during the late nineteenth century. He went by many aliases: Charles E. Bowles, Charles E. Bolton, C. E. Bolton, T. Z. Spaulding, and, most famously, Black Bart. Known for his polite manners, Boles was a curious counterpoint to the wild thieves who ran rampant in the American West at the time.
The earliest accounts of Charles E. Boles begin with his life in New York State around the 1830s. His travels during the 1850s took him to California during the first gold rush, but failure to secure his fortune soon brought him back east. He lived, wed, and had a family in Illinois before joining the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, Boles once again tried his hand at silver and gold mining in Idaho, Montana, and finally, California a second time. However, it was not Boles’s early life that brought about his notoriety; it was his transformation into the gentleman bandit, a conversion that continues to fascinate readers of the Old West myths to the present day.
It was on Funk Hill in the summer of 1875 that Charles Boles committed his first robbery. He held up a stagecoach on its run from Sonora to Milton in California, an incident that set the pattern for many more robberies to come. His mask, method, manner, and motive remained consistent over the course of eight years and approximately twenty-eight robberies.
Stagecoach drivers often had to slow down in order to navigate sharp turns, bypass boulders, and climb hills. Charles Boles used his knowledge of the landscape to his advantage, often stopping the horses in an uphill curve in order to perform his robberies. On his first attempt, Boles chose his location amidst numerous boulders. He used the boulders as a hiding place before the robbery and armed with a shotgun and disguised by a flour sack (with eye holes cut out of it) over his head, Boles surprised the driver. First asking for the Wells Fargo express box and mailbags, Boles spoke to an unseen accomplice in a voice loud enough for the driver to hear. He drew the driver’s attention to several other gun barrels pointing up at him. Considering himself and his passengers surrounded, the driver handed down the box and sacks; a female passenger on the coach also threw her purse to the thief, who returned it politely, saying that he was only after Wells Fargo money. After Boles made his escape on foot, the driver and lawmen discovered that the barrels on the boulders were in fact merely sticks angled to appear that way.
Boles’s other robberies were performed in much the same manner, with only slight variations. Locations were chosen primarily throughout California and mainly around the Sierra Nevada. Boles used both day and night in order to plan and execute his raids on stagecoaches carrying Wells, Fargo & Company strongboxes. His mask was always a flour sack with eyeholes. While he did use weapons, a shotgun and an axe (to break open the boxes), reports maintained that he was always polite to the drivers and passengers in the coach. Boles may have used the ruse of accomplices, but he always worked alone and according to legend, never fired a shot. His solitude and nonviolent methods set him apart from bandits like the Tom Bell gang, who mercilessly and indiscriminately attacked California stagecoaches with violence. Historian Alton Pryor points out that Charles Boles was “no ordinary ruffian. He planned and executed his robberies with careful research and undeniable finesse” (Pryor 1999, 123).
The nickname of Black Bart came about when Charles Boles left poems at two separate crime scenes. It was the fourth robbery “where the road agent first left that famed note for the lawmen and newspaper editors, and the one where he established his alias” (Hume et al. 2010, 44). Short and rhyming, the poems were both signed “Black Bart, the PO8.” The nickname was thought to be taken from a character of the same name in a short story entitled “The Case of Summerfield,” written by W. H. Rhodes under the pen name Caxton. It was published in 1862 and later serialized in the Sacramento Union in 1871. The main character was a man named Black Bart who was a stark contrast to the gentlemanly stagecoach robber who was, by all accounts, courteous and genteel.
Charles E. Boles’s final stagecoach robbery took place in 1883 at the scene of his first, on Funk Hill in California. Black Bart was wounded in the attempt, and in his haste to get away, left the only pieces of evidence found at the scene of his crimes. The most important of these personal items was a handkerchief with a laundry mark stamped upon it. Two detectives, James Hume and Harry Morse, tracked the mark to a San Francisco laundry, which then led to Charles Boles’s hotel room where he was registered under the name of Charles E. Bolton. After questioning, he pleaded guilty to a single stagecoach robbery in 1883 and was convicted. Sentenced to six years in San Quentin Prison, Boles served as prisoner number 11046 until he was released for good behavior in early 1888. He never confessed to being Black Bart. After his release, Charles E. Boles was never heard from again.
The legend of the gentleman bandit lives on in film, fiction, and folklore. The 1948 film Black Bart takes a number of liberties with the true story, placing Black Bart in a love affair with a famous dancer. W. H. Manning also sensationalized and capitalized on the story in his 1884 dime novel, The Gold-Dragon, Or the California Bloodhound: A Story of PO8, the Lone Highwayman. Despite all of the embellished stories surrounding Black Bart, the most intriguing story remains the truth.
Josianne Leah Campbell
See also Bonney, William “Billy the Kid”; James, Jesse; Outlaw Heroes; Parker, Robert Leroy “Butch Cassidy”
Further Reading
Hoeper, George. 1995. Black Bart: Boulevardier Bandit. Fresno, CA: Word Dancer Press.
Hume, James B., John N. Thacker, and R. Michael Wilson. 2010. Wells, Fargo & Co. Stagecoach and Train Robberies, 1870–1884: The Corporate Report of 1885 with Additional Facts about the Crimes and Their Perpetrators. Rev. ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Manning, W. H. 1884. The Gold-Dragon, Or the California Bloodhound: A Story of PO8, the Lone Highwayman. New York: Beadle and Adams.
Pryor, Alton. 1999. Classic Tales in California History. Roseville, CA: Stagecoach.
Wilson, R. Michael. 2014. Stagecoach Robberies in California: A Complete Record, 1856–1913. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.