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The Sundance Kid
The Life of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh
By Donna B. Ernst UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2009 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-8307-7
CHAPTER 1
The Wild Bunch
From cattle rustling to bank robberies and train holdups—that often seemed to be a natural progression of events with some cowboys during the late nineteenth century. The gangs of cowboys-turned-outlaws shared in the stolen money and excitement found along the Outlaw Trail, a series of hideouts and safe houses, in the Old West.
The Wild Bunch was one of the best-known outlaw gangs in Old West history, well trained and experienced in travel along the Outlaw Trail. Their name came about as a result of their frequent wild behavior in towns along the Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah borders. They shot up saloons and hurrahed main streets in celebration, earning themselves recognition as a wild bunch of cowboys in the local newspapers. The name stuck.
The Wild Bunch had a loose membership of about twenty-five men, but any given robbery seldom involved more than two or three of the same men from any previous or future holdup. Their biggest advantage over the law was their skill in keeping their identities uncertain, their use of good horseflesh and relays, and their ability to lie low in one of the hideouts between heists. The core group consisted of five men.
The leader of the gang was Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy. The oldest of thirteen children, Butch was born April 13, 1866, in Beaver, Utah, to a pioneering Mormon family. His early mentor was Mike Cassidy, a hired hand and sometime rustler from a neighboring ranch. When the necessity to pick an alias became apparent, Parker became Cassidy. Except for his penchant for stealing money, Butch adhered to a rather strict code of conduct. He never killed anyone until the end; and it has been said that he never stole from the common people, just from banks and railroads.
Harvey Alexander Logan, alias Kid Curry, was born in 1867 in Tama County, Iowa, the third of six children. After the deaths of his parents, he and his three brothers homesteaded in Landusky, Montana, where they made a living rustling cattle and horses. But ranching was too mild for Harvey's temperament. He was the wildest member of the gang—he murdered nine men—but he deferred to Butch's leadership in the gang's escapades.
Benjamin Arnold Kilpatrick, alias the Tall Texan, was born in 1874 in Coleman County, Texas. The family of ten children moved to a ranch in Tom Green County, Texas, where Ben and his brothers quickly earned a reputation as the delinquents of the day. Two of his earliest acquaintances were Sam and Tom Ketchum, fellow Texans and future outlaw leaders.
William Richard Carver, alias Will Causey, was born September 12, 1868, in Wilson County, Texas. Originally a member of the Texas-based Ketchum brothers gang, he did not join the Wild Bunch until the Ketchum gang began to break up. Will was probably the only member of the Wild Bunch who could stand his own against the marksmanship of Sundance.
Harry Alonzo Longabaugh was born in the spring of 1867 in Mont Clare, Pennsylvania, the youngest of five children. In 1887, he was sentenced to eighteen months in jail for stealing a horse in Sundance, Wyoming. Having earned an outlaw reputation and the alias the Sundance Kid, he quickly became proficient at both bank and train robberies. He and Butch became partners and eventually tried to go straight in South America. This is his story ...
CHAPTER 2
The Early Years
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania
By today's standards, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh's family seems almost dysfunctional. Saying that, however, does not in any way pardon or excuse the decisions he made throughout his life. Whatever he made of his early life was done purely for excitement and easy money, and he paid dearly for his behavior. But his upbringing may help explain his choices.
The Longabaugh family lived along the Schuylkill River and Canal in the neighboring towns of Mont Clare, Montgomery County, and Phoenixville, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Their ancestor Conrad Langenbach emigrated from Germany as an indentured servant, arriving in Philadelphia on December 24, 1772, aboard the brig Morning Star. Conrad's debt was released early, just in time for him to serve with the Northampton County Militia during the Revolutionary War. At the end of his service, Conrad settled in eastern Pennsylvania, about thirty miles north of Philadelphia. By the time he married Catharina in 1781, his surname had been through a variety of spellings and was phonetically Anglicized to Longabaugh. The Longabaugh union was blessed with seven children, the last one named Jonas Isaac, born in 1798 in Pennsylvania.
Jonas Longabaugh married Christiana Hillbert in 1821, and they had five children—Josiah, Nathaniel, Michael, Mary, and Margaret; a sixth baby was stillborn. Josiah, the oldest, was born June 14, 1822, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; he married Annie G. Place, the daughter of Deacon Henry and Rachel (Tustin) Place, on August 11, 1855, in Phoenixville. They also had five children—Elwood Place, born June 21, 1858; Samanna, born April 22, 1860; Emma T., born in 1863; Harvey Sylvester, born May 19, 1865; and Harry Alonzo, born in the spring of 1867.
Josiah was not particularly ambitious; he never owned property or held a job for any length of time. He was drafted for service in the Civil War and was later granted a pension for "General Debility," a gentle way of saying that he had hemorrhoids. Annie, however, worked hard to make a home for her family; she was very religious and very strict.
For years, the family moved from one rented house to another, almost annually. They seemed to move each time Josiah changed jobs, from day laborer to carpenter to farm hand; but they always stayed in the neighboring towns of Mont Clare and Phoenixville. When Harry was born, the family was living in half of a duplex located at 122 Jacobs Street in Mont Clare. The duplex backed up to the Schuylkill Canal, on which Josiah was then working.
The towns of Phoenixville and Mont Clare were very blue collar with a large mix of Italian, Irish, and German immigrants. Phoenixville, the home of the Phoenix Iron Company, was very much a mill town. The company board members also served as officers of the "Iron Bank." They donated a large tract of land for a town park; they underwrote a general store for employees only; they bought out a failing nail manufacturing company to save local jobs; and they donated free family housing to workers who volunteered to serve in the Union.
In contrast to the ethnic mix of laborers was the impressive leadership at the Phoenix Iron Company, which included future politicians such as Governor Samuel Pennypacker, inventors such as John Griffen, and military men.8 Beginning in 1861, the Phoenix began manufacturing "the Griffen wrought iron cannon, an arm made by welding together bars laid longitudinally, transversely and spirally, and which, on trial in the field, proved to be peculiarly durable and effective. About twelve hundred of these guns were supplied" to the United States government. As the Griffen gun "gained the reputation of being the best arm of the kind in the service and were more generally used in the light artillery than any other" weapon, it also reflected well upon the town of Phoenixville. Both the town and the company prospered.
Although none of the Longabaugh family members are known to have worked for the Phoenix, the atmosphere in such a company town influenced everyone. Just half a mile away, across the covered bridge from Phoenixville, the village of Mont Clare was a boatman's community. While a few of the local residents walked over to the mills, the majority worked along the canal. Because Josiah worked on the canal, it was the influence that affected the Longabaugh family the most strongly. Originally built to facilitate the shipping of coal from upstate Pennsylvania to Philadelphia, the canal also serviced local communities for shipment of farm products and iron.
Harry's Uncle Michael, who owned a large home in Mont Clare, had his own canal boats and merchandised the products he shipped out of a small store in Phoenixville. He often carried the coal and other local products to ports as distant as Boston, New York, Erie, and Scranton. At one time or another, the Longabaugh brothers, including Harry, each worked for Uncle Michael, prodding the mules along the canal and poling the boats on the river.
According to the 1880 federal census records, by the time Harry and his brother Harvey were teenagers, Josiah had sent them out of the home to work; they were hired servants, boarding with their employers. Samanna had already married and was out of the home, but Elwood and Emma were unemployed and living at home. No one today seems to know why the older siblings stayed at home, while the two younger boys were earning their keep elsewhere.
The census records indicate that Harry, age thirteen, was boarding with the Wilmer Ralston family in West Vincent Township, Chester County, about ten miles from his parents. Ralston owned over one hundred acres of farmland and raised horses. It was at the Ralstons that young Harry first worked with horses, a trade that proved quite useful in later years.
By 1882, Harry had moved back home with his parents, who were then living at 354 Church Street in Phoenixville. He attended the First Baptist Church in Phoenixville, where the family worshipped and where his maternal grandfather, Henry Place, was a respected deacon; and he attended the nearby Gay Street School just three blocks away. In spite of his sporadic schooling, Harry was well read—he owned his own library card, purchased at the cost of $1 and issued on January 31, 1881. He probably began reading novels about the exciting and wild West.
Harry's oldest brother, Elwood, left home in 1882 and became a whaler aboard the Mary & Helen out of Maine and bound for California, probably via Cape Horn. Elwood was based out of the San Francisco Bay area, and the Pinkerton Detective Agency recorded that, in later years, Harry and Elwood were frequently in contact with each other.
Samanna, his oldest sister, was married to Oliver Hallman, a self-employed, wrought-iron worker who had apprenticed under John Griffen, and they had already begun a family. In his youth, Harry and Samanna had developed a close and long-lasting relationship; she was the sibling who stayed most in touch with him over the years. In fact, the Pinkerton Detective Agency recorded her home address in their files and paid a postal clerk to open her mail and watch her home from the Mont Clare post office a few doors away.
The Pinkertons were in themselves an interesting story. The Pinkerton Detective Agency began as the North Western Police Agency in Chicago, Illinois, in 1850 under the direction of Allan Pinkerton. Pinkerton was born on August 25, 1819, in Glasgow, Scotland, and immigrated to the United States in 1842 in order to avoid an arrest warrant. He had been an agitator for workers' rights in Scotland, and immediately picked up the abolitionists' cause in the States, aiding many runaway slaves in reaching Canada.
Using his new agency, Pinkerton also worked closely with the railroads to capture holdup men and to organize a guard force on board the trains. During the 1850s, he made a name for himself doing railroad undercover work. Then, in February 1861, Pinkerton discovered a plot to assassinate President-elect Lincoln. Soon thereafter, President Lincoln asked Pinkerton, using the alias of Major E. J. Allen, to close the North Western Police Agency and to set up a Union spy system for the government. In later years, this same system became the Federal Secret Service, which in turn served as a primary concept for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
After the Civil War, Pinkerton opened a new agency, named Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, which used an open eye for its logo and the motto "We never sleep." He took fierce pride in his work and accomplishments and once wrote, "I do not know the meaning of the word 'fail.' Nothing in hell or heaven can influence me when I know that I am right."
However, it was this certitude that put Pinkerton's methods on the border of unethical. With Pinkerton's death in 1884, his sons William and Robert really pushed legal methods to the limit. In a 1921 letter William A. Pinkerton wrote, "We did have to do with the breaking up of the 'Wild Bunch' and the killing off of a number of them." Another unsigned letter stated, "We hope someday to apprehend these people in this country or through our correspondents get them killed in the Argentine Republic." They became desperate in their cause; they wanted these outlaws at any cost.
Expenses for the Pinkertons were usually paid by the American Bankers Association, the Union Pacific Railroad, the Great Northern Railroad, and other large companies. However, "on one occasion at the agency's expense ... [Pinkertons] sent an official from the New York Office to the Argentine Republic to endeavor to get information and locate the remaining members of this band ... The American Bankers Association would not permit the expense. And therefore we have been keeping a run on these people in our own way."
Keeping track in their own way meant the hiring of undercover detectives and the paying of informants. Paid informants included postal clerks who were expected to open mail and forward information to the agency. One of their best undercover agents, Charlie Siringo, managed to infiltrate the gang under the guise of a fugitive from Texas. Siringo gleaned much family information from Harvey Logan's family in Montana and from Sundance's friends in Wyoming. His reports became part of the dossiers that the agency opened on each Wild Bunch outlaw.
Also listed in these Pinkerton files was Harry's sister Emma, who became a successful businesswoman in a day when women's rights and independence were rare. By the 1890s, she owned a seamstress business, McCandless and Longabaugh, which did piecework for the well-known John Wanamaker's Department Store in Philadelphia. Family members remember Emma as a spinster and as the most austere member of the family. She eventually changed the spelling of her name to Longabough because having an outlaw for a brother was not good for business. But the Pinkertons knew where she lived and worked and entered the information into their growing dossier on her brother.
Harry's brother Harvey was a day laborer and carpenter like their father, and his business sign is still owned by the family today. The Pinkerton Detective Agency records show that in 1902 Harry visited the beach resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey, at a time when Harvey was doing carpentry work on the now-famous Boardwalk.
At the age of fourteen, Harry traveled by canal boat with his Uncle Michael to find a new job. His sister Samanna kept the business books for her husband and made occasional personal notations among the purchase orders. She wrote, "Phoenixville June 1882—Harry A. Longabaugh left home to seek employment in Ph. [Philadelphia]. And from their [sic] to N.Y.C. from their [sic] to Boston and from their [sic] home on the 26 of July or near that date."
However, he was apparently unsuccessful because Samanna's next entry reads, "Phoenixville Aug. 30th 1882 Harry A. Longabaugh left home for the West. Left home at 14 [years old]—Church St. Phoenixville below Gay St." Harry boarded the train at the Phoenixville depot less than a mile from his home. He traveled alone, past Horseshoe Curve in western Pennsylvania, and headed for the West he had read about so often.
Harry left home to help a distant cousin, George Longenbaugh, who had just taken his pregnant wife, Mary, and young son, Walter, from Illinois to Colorado by covered wagon.
CHAPTER 3
Ranching in Cortez, Colorado
George Longenbaugh descended from Baltzer and Elizabeth Lanabach, a branch of Conrad's family. Baltzer's lineage traveled from Germany to Baltimore, Maryland, and eventually moved through Shelbyville, Ohio, and into Shelby County, Illinois. In 1882 George needed Harry to help settle the new homestead.
According to George's descendants today, George originally moved his family to Durango, Colorado, where he worked with the town's new irrigation system, and the family settled into their new home. However, within a year George decided to move about fifty miles farther west to Cortez as land opened for homesteading, and he invited Harry to join them. Harry remained with George and his family until early 1886, helping with the horses and the new homestead. Together they bred horses, planted a few crops to feed the family, and made the necessary improvements on the land.
Harry also worked occasionally for Henry Goodman, the foreman of the LC Ranch in nearby McElmo Canyon. During Harry's time with cousin George, he became a horse wrangler and learned how to purchase and breed good horseflesh, trades he would put to good use in the future.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Sundance Kid by Donna B. Ernst. Copyright © 2009 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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