17. Don’t Mess With Boles
Charles Earl Boles, AKA Black Bart (1829 – died after 1888) was born to English parents who emigrated to New York in 1831. He joined the California Gold Rush in 1849, and spent a few years prospecting before trekking back east and settling in Illinois. Boles enlisted in an Illinois regiment during the Civil War, and proved a good soldier, getting promoted to Company First Sergeant within a year. He was brevetted as a lieutenant before his discharge in 1865.
After the war, Boles returned to gold prospecting, but a run in with Wells Fargo agents in 1871 left him seething, and vowing vengeance. He changed his name to Black Bart, after a character from a dime novel, and took up a career as a highwayman, whose specialty was robbing Wells Fargo stagecoaches in northern California and southern Oregon.