7 
7 
He looked anything but a robber.
During the eight years that Jim Hume pursued Black Bart, little did he realize just how similar their life stories were. Charles E. Boles was born in England in 1829, and his family came to the United States two years later, settling in Upstate New York. Like Jim, Charley grew up on a farm. His childhood was typical, and he became known locally for his athletic ability, especially his wrestling skills. A friend remembered, “He was a young man of excellent habits and greatly esteemed and respected by all who knew him.”
Again, like Jim, the lure of the gold rush led him to leave home and seek his fortune in California. Charley, accompanied by two brothers, James and David, began mining along the American River in late 1849. Less than two years later, they returned to New York. After a short stay, Charley returned to California, this time with David and another brother, Robert. Sadly, both David and Robert became ill and died shortly after their arrival. Charley remained and mined gold for another two years before deciding to head home.
On the trip back, he stopped for a while in Decatur, in Macon County, Illinois, where he met and married Mary Johnson in 1854. The young couple settled there and began to raise a family. But the quiet farming life did not suit Charley, and when the Civil War broke out in 1861, he saw an opportunity for adventure. On August 13, 1862, at age 33, he enlisted in the Illinois Volunteers, 116th Infantry Regiment, Company B, composed of Macon County residents. By November 8, the regiment was on its way to Memphis, Tennessee. The men saw action in the fiercest battles throughout the South.
The 116th endured many hardships during the war. During the Battle of Arkansas Post on January 9–11, 1863, Company B sustained very heavy losses. Boles was one of 25 of the company’s survivors. After their victory at the Battle of Chattanooga in November 1863, Boles and his fellow soldiers experienced a very cold winter. They kept warm marching 25 to 35 miles during the days and then suffered from the cold while camping at night.
Portrait of Charles E. Boles. Many noticed his similarity to James B. Hume.
During a battle in Dallas, Georgia, at the end of May 1864, he was seriously wounded by a shot that went through his cartridge box, belt, and shirt, inflicting a deep flesh wound on his left side and leaving a significant scar.
While battling his way through the South, Charley was recognized for his bravery, and as the war ended he was promoted to sergeant. His proud wife gave him a Bible, which she inscribed, “This precious Bible is presented to Charles E. Boles, first sergeant, Co. B, 116th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, by his wife as New Year’s gift. God gives us heart to which His [illegible words] … faith to believe. Decatur, Illinois, 1865.”
A fellow Company B soldier Isaac D. Jennings recalled, “The 116th had its share of real fighting through the war, and that means that he was in a good many places that try men’s courage. It can not be recalled that he ever shirked a danger.” Jennings never suspected Charley “as having in him the making of a desperate highwayman.” Another former soldier, John E. Braden, remembered, “We slept in the same tent for many months. Boles was a good soldier. He was brave, hardy, could endure long marches, had few bad habits and was generally liked. He did not use tobacco, never was profane, and I never saw him drinking anything until after we had taken Columbia, S.C. and then he only drank a little wine.” Braden also recalled that Charley was “known as a good penman and a man of considerable education.”
When the war ended, the 116th was one of the regiments in the May 1865 Grand Review of the Armies, a parade in Washington, DC, before the president of the United States, Andrew Johnson. Charles E. Boles was mustered out of the army with the rank of first sergeant and made his way back to Decatur. During the previous three years, he had easily marched many miles a day, endured countless hardships, and become comfortable sleeping on the bare ground. Once he learned about Charley’s military experiences, Jim Hume finally understood how Black Bart could so quickly and easily travel long distances on foot.
Charley returned home to Decatur, Illinois, but didn’t stay long. He sold his farm and moved with his wife and children to a nearby town. Then he was off to Montana to seek his riches in mining. His frequent letters home described successes, and in a last letter to his wife in 1869 he promised to return home and bring his family back to Montana. Addressing “My own dear Mary and little ones,” Charley wrote that he and a partner were working on a mine claim, and “if it pays reasonably well we will both come home in the fall…. I hope you will not blame me if I fail, and do not put it down too strong that I am coming in the fall.”
Charles E. Boles marched in the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington, DC, at the end of the Civil War.
He ended by asking Mary to “kiss all the little ones for me, and tell them papa is aching to get hold of them once more.”
He never returned home. Mary feared he was dead, murdered, or captured by Native Americans. With poverty looming, she sold the house and took on a series of low-paying jobs to support herself and her three daughters. She began referring to herself as the Widow Boles. In 1873 Mary and the children moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where she worked as a seamstress.
Meanwhile, Charley went from Montana to Salt Lake City, Utah, where he remained for two years. Eventually, he arrived back in California to resume the mining activity he had left before the Civil War. He surfaced in San Francisco as Charles Bolton, a respectable mining engineer. He enjoyed city life to the fullest. His rooming house acquaintances later described Bolton as a quiet, dignified, and polite professional who disappeared from time to time to check on his mining interests. Only after his capture were those trips connected to the Wells Fargo stagecoach robberies.
The mystery of how Charley assumed the character of Black Bart was revealed when he disclosed that one of his favorite novels was The Case of Summerfield by William Henry Rhodes, which was serialized in local newspapers in the early 1870s. The main character was a robber of Wells Fargo stagecoaches whose name just happened to be Black Bart. When he was writing his first poem at the robbery site, Charley remembered that name and created his new identity.
Only after Bart’s capture in 1883 did Mary Boles find out what happened to her husband. His arrest was national news, and she was shocked when she read about the inscription in Bart’s Bible proving that the famous stagecoach robber was her long-lost Charley. She communicated with law officers in California, who sent her one of Bart’s photographs, which she immediately identified as being of her husband. Mary and Bart exchanged letters for a short time while he was in San Quentin. She was ready to accept him back in her life after he was released, but Bart was not interested. He made his intentions clear in a letter to Mary:
After waking all these days hoping to be able to comply with your wishes and my own most ardent desires I most sincerely regret that I MUST disappoint you. My dear, it is UTTERLY impossible for me to come now…. Although I am ‘Free’ and in fair health, I am most miserable. My Dear family I wish you could give me up for ever & be happy, for I feel I shall be a burthen [burden] to you as I live no matter where I am.
Charley’s treatment of his family angered Jim Hume, who told a reporter, “If anything were needed to prove him a heartless and unmitigated scoundrel his treatment of his wife and children would do so.”
On the day of Bart’s release from San Quentin in 1888, a journalist, Charles Michelson, interviewed him. Bart admitted to Michelson, “I have been a stage robber, but I never stole from a man who could not afford to lose what I got, and I have helped many a poor man along. I took my chances, but I never harmed anybody, and I never pointed a loaded gun at a stage in my life.”
Michelson exclaimed, “What?”
“Yes, that is true,” Bart responded. “My constant fear was that I would hurt somebody.”
After his release, Bart spent a few weeks in a San Francisco rooming house. No matter where he went, his fame accompanied him. Jim Hume made sure of that. Before his prison release, Jim had sent Bart’s description and photograph to law officials throughout California and Nevada. Bart departed the city in February and made his way to several other towns before ending up in Visalia, California. He left Visalia on February 23, leaving behind a suitcase in the care of the hotel manager, who notified Hume. When Jim opened the suitcase, he discovered “a package of crackers, a package of sugar, bottle of pickles, can of corned beef, can of lunch tongue, can of currant jelly, pound paper of coffee, two pairs of cuffs and two neckties.” One of the cuffs carried a familiar laundry mark: F.X.O.7.
For Jim Hume, the suitcase was proof enough that Bart planned to return to his criminal ways. The contents would sustain Bart as he traveled on foot again to scout out robbery sites. Hume put the blame directly on Bart for new stagecoach robberies in 1888, but in truth, there is no proof that Bart was responsible.
From that point, Bart faded from view, but rumors about his whereabouts did not. He was incorrectly blamed for other stagecoach robberies throughout the West. When a reporter asked, “Is it true, Mr. Hume, that Black Bart was in the pay of your company?” Jim answered, “I am astonished at you asking such a question. If it were so don’t you think he would have been only too glad to say in this letter to his wife that he was working instead of writing in such a despondent strain?”
Others claimed to have seen him in such far-flung places as New York, Alaska, and Panama. John Thacker, one of Jim Hume’s Wells Fargo detectives, insisted that Bart actually boarded a ship headed to Japan. But in reality, no record exists of Charles E. Boles’s activities after leaving Visalia, California. Only the Black Bart legend survived.
