While researching nineteenth-century Wyoming history, I’ve often found that when I solve one mystery, another one emerges in its wake.
Since the majority of our history is unwritten, irrefutable primary evidence is hard to gather. This reality is sobering for those of us crazy enough to write about past events long after they happened.
I was reminded of this yet again when I started looking into the whereabouts of notorious outlaw Frank James during the three years after the Northfield, Minnesota, raid in 1876.
Frank didn’t suffer a violent death like many of his outlaw contemporaries, including his brother, Jesse, as well as Billy the Kid, John Wesley Hardin, and Black Jack Ketchum.
In fact, Frank survived into old age. He and Cole Younger, his outlaw partner from the Northfield caper, teamed up in their later years to perform on a lecture circuit decrying the outlaw life.
One puzzling question remains unanswered: Was Frank part of the Big Nose George Parott gang that killed two law enforcement officers near Elk Mountain in Wyoming on August 19, 1878?
Eight cold-blooded outlaws from Parott’s gang rode into Rattlesnake Canyon after they attempted a train robbery using the same derailment tactics associated with the James brothers in Missouri.
Worried they’d be discovered, the men hid in the trees, where they later shot two law enforcement officers, Robert Widdowfield and Tip Vincent, who had been tracking them. After the killings, they dispersed into the countryside. No one alive knew their identities outside of the gang members themselves.
Later that year, a couple of the murderers blabbed about their crime to other outlaws camping near Rock Creek, revealing the names of individual gang members.
When Joe Minuse, one of the Rock Creek outlaws, was later captured, he spilled the beans to law enforcement, naming the homicidal outlaws he had learned about during a conversation with the participant Dutch Charley.
Carbon residents strung Dutch Charley up after he repeated the names of the Parott gang members. Big Nose George eventually was arrested and revealed the same names on multiple occasions during his captivity. These outlaws all identified the murderers from the Elk Mountain incident, including Frank James, who used the alias of McKinney.
Based on the findings from the Carbon County grand jury convened to hear the case several murder indictments were prepared.
One indictment lists Frank James as the outlaw who shot a bullet into the chest of Tip Vincent. James is also listed on each indictment as an accomplice in the crime.
Additionally, several settlers from the Big Horn country believed that Frank lived among them periodically between 1878 and 1879, using a shack on the banks of Little Goose Creek.
What do historians say about Frank James’s whereabouts at this time? Some started writing before the dust had settled on the outlaw trail. A couple argue that the James brothers passed through Wyoming on their way to New Mexico, Texas, and Old Mexico.
A few think Frank partnered with Big Nose George, but didn’t linger in Wyoming afterward. Others believe that neither Frank nor Jesse ever made it into Wyoming. These documented historical summaries are ambiguous at best.
The most important point is not whether a century and a half of historians can prove Frank James’s whereabouts in August 1878. What is important is contemporary evidence that comes from primary records established during the events in question, although it is circumstantial at best.
Among the outlaw admissions about James’s culpability includes a Big Nose George story told in a parlor conversation before his Rawlins trial in 1880. These are statements the court ruled as a true admission to the crime, as legally binding as a confession.
Carbon County law enforcement indicted Frank James and the rest of the gang for the murders of two law enforcement officers, according to primary public records still on file in the county court house in Rawlins. Contemporary sources like these legal court documents unambiguously identified Frank James as one of the murderers.
Had Carbon County requested extradition of Frank James from Missouri a couple of years later when James was in custody there, the question of his involvement in Wyoming could have been addressed with sworn court testimony.
Instead, Rawlins and the county had spent so much on the 1880 trial of Big Nose George Parott, they might not have had adequate funds left to pursue such a hot-button extradition request.
It is now up to the readers of Wyoming history to decide for themselves whether Frank James ever rode as an outlaw in the 1878 Parott gang. Another Wyoming mystery that will likely never be completely solved.
Mark Miller can be reached at westrider51@outlook.com
