Fifteen Minutes to Fortune: The Newton Boys and America's Biggest Mail Train Robbery

 

Willie and Willis Newton

If you ask the average guy on the street who the James-Younger or Dalton Gang are, they will smile knowingly and nod their heads. If you ask the same question about the Newton Boys, people will shake their heads and cast a strange glance at you like you’re asking about some long-forgotten boy band from the 60s.

The funny thing is that the four Newton brothers—Willis, Willie, James, and Joseph — were probably the most successful robbers in American history.

In the five years between 1919 and 1924, the brothers robbed nearly ninety banks and six trains—taking in close to $4,000,000. But, unlike the James-Younger Gang or the Dalton Brothers, the Newtons kept a low profile. They crept into banks after dark, blew the safe, and disappeared before they had to deal with any bank employees or customers.

Robbing Texas banks proved a cakewalk. Willis bribed an insurance official with the Texas Association of Bankers. In return, he got a list of banks using older model safes he could blow open with a few dabs of nitroglycerin.

Unfortunately, the gang’s information in the Rondout robbery was too good. The train had nine mail cars and carried over fifteen hundred mail pouches. Yet, the bandits knew precisely where to find the sixty-three big-money bags of registered mail.

James-Younger Gang: The Kansas City Exposition Robbery

 

Kansas City Fair robbery

One account of the County Agricultural Fair robbery at the Kansas City Exposition on September 26, 1872, has it playing out like a B-Western. Three men wearing wide-brimmed slouch hats rode up to the ticket office. One rider dismounted and walked up to the cashier.

“What if I was to say I was Jesse James and told you to hand out that tin box of money? What would you say?

“I’d say I’d see you in hell first.”

“Well, that’s just who I am—Jesse James, and you’d better hand it out pretty damned quick, or....”

The man punctuated his request by shoving a Navy revolver in ticket-taker Ben Wallace’s face. And then, there was some careless shooting where a young girl took a bullet before the robbers rode away.

 

That may have been the way it happened, but most papers provided a tamer view.

The robbery happened at sundown, just as the exposition grounds were closing. Three men wearing checkered cloth “drawn over their foreheads and below their eyes” rode up to the ticket seller’s office. One jumped off his horse and grabbed the cash box while the other two held the crowd at bay, pointing their guns at anyone who moved, “threatening instant death to the first man who moved a muscle.”

James-Younger Gang: The Deposit Bank Robbery At Columbia Kentucky

 

Five men rode into Columbia, Kentucky, shortly after 2 p.m. on April 29, 1872. Three hitched their horses in an alley near Major Winfrey’s residence and walked into the Deposit Bank. The other two positioned themselves at opposite ends of the courthouse on the public square, where they had a view of the entire city.

Inside the bank, R. A. C. Martin worked at the cashier’s desk. Four men sat around a large wooden table near the front door. They included Judge James Garnett, president of the bank, Major T. C. Winfrey, James T. Page, and William H. Hudson.

The bandits didn’t waste any time. One said, “Good evening, gentlemen,” then pulled a pistol out of his saddle-riders, pointed it at cashier R. A. C. Martin’s head, and fired. Martin fell forward onto the floor. The robber then pointed his pistol at James Garnett’s head. Garnett pushed the weapon aside, receiving a powder burn on his hand when it went off. Another shot was fired at William Hudson, grazing his wrist. Garnett, Hudson, and James Page ran out the door in the ensuing confusion, leaving cashier R. A. C. Martin alone with the robbers.

If You Only Read One Book On The American Indian Wars

The Old West wasn’t won. At least not in Dee Brown’s version.

Every treaty came with an expiration date. Every promise had an escape clause. Every time a tribe packed up and moved, somebody in Washington wanted the next piece of land.

So they moved again.

Brown takes you from the Sand Creek Massacre to the Little Bighorn, from the Long Walk of the Navajo to Wounded Knee. Along the way you meet Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, and dozens of others. They negotiate, surrender, and keep their word.

The government usually doesn’t.

There’s no melodrama here. Brown simply keeps piling the evidence on the table. Army reports. Newspaper accounts. Letters. Eyewitnesses. By the halfway point, you stop wondering who’s telling the truth.

You start wondering how this ever became the version of history most of us grew up with.

Forget the Hollywood West. Forget the noble cavalry charging over the hill. This is a story about people watching their world disappear one broken promise at a time.

It’s not an easy read. It’s not supposed to be.

More than fifty years after it first appeared, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee still has the power to change the way you look at the American frontier. And once it does, there’s really no going back.

I first read the book when it came out in 1972. I was in his school then, but it turned the table on the way I looked at history. Maybe it’ll do the same for you.

Why Saving Money After World War I Was A Patriotic Duty

 

Colorized version of a black and white poster printed in the 
Davenport Democrat and Leader. May 11, 1919.

By 1919, the guns had fallen silent.

American soldiers were coming home from Europe. Victory parades filled the streets. People were ready to get on with their lives.

There was just one problem. The war had cost a staggering amount of money.

The government had borrowed billions to build ships, equip soldiers, feed armies, and keep supplies flowing across the Atlantic. Winning the war was only half the battle. Now the government had to pay for it.

Instead of raising taxes, the Treasury doubled down on something it had already introduced during the war—the War Savings Stamp program.

The idea was brilliantly simple. Almost anyone could afford a stamp. Buy one when you had a few extra cents. Buy another the next week. Eventually you’d have enough to exchange them for a Treasury Savings Certificate that earned interest.

It wasn’t just about financing the government.

James Younger Gang: The Corydon Iowa Bank Robbery

 

The James-Younger Gang spent several days scouting Wayne County, Iowa, before setting their sights on the Ocobock Brothers Bank. The gang’s first choice was the Wayne County Treasurer’s office. They’d learned that it held over $40,000 in receipts and figured it’d be a nice, easy score, but when Jesse, Frank, and Cole Younger walked into the office, the clerk didn’t have a key to the safe. He told them the treasurer had it, and he was away at a town meeting.

 

The boys left, intent on finding the treasurer. But as they rode down the empty streets, they saw the Ocobock Brothers Bank and decided it fit the bill.

Jesse couldn’t have picked a better day to rob the bank. Missouri orator Henry Clay Dean was giving a speech at the Methodist church that afternoon, and most of the businesses in town had closed for the day so they could attend the meeting. 

 

The robbers hitched their horses across the street and walked to the bank. One man waited outside to watch the horses. The other three entered the bank and pointed their Navy Colts at the cashier, Ted Wock. One robber handed Wock a wheat sack and walked him to the safe.

 

“Get up, walk easy, don’t say a damned word,” he said. “Unlock that safe.”

 

The cashier scooped all the money into the sack and handed it to Jesse. Afterward, they bound and gagged the man and left him sitting by the safe. As they walked out, one robber wished Wock a “good day.”

After the robbery, Jesse couldn’t help taunting the crowd gathered to hear Dean speak. A man working at Brant & Dillon’s meat market and grocery store said Jesse interrupted the meeting to tell Dean they had just robbed the bank. As he left, Jesse couldn’t resist adding, “Catch us if you can.”

James-Younger Gang: The Gallatin Bank Robbery

 

Jesse James shooting John W. Cashier Sheets  during Gallatin Bank Robbery

Tuesday, December 7, 1869, was a cloudy, misty day. As two lone horsemen rode into town, the nearby hills were concealed behind a dense fog. The riders hitched their horses outside the Daviess County Savings Bank between 12:30 and 1:00.

Inside the bank, Frank James asked Cashier John W. Sheets to change a one-hundred-dollar bill. As Sheets sat down to write a receipt, Jesse shot him twice—in the head and chest. Sheets fell to the floor, dead.

Bank clerk William McDowell ran out the door. Frank fired two shots. One shot tore through McDowell’s arm, but didn’t slow him down. Once outside, McDowell sounded the alarm. The townspeople grabbed their guns and began firing, but they were too late to slow the robbers down.

The bandits took what they found in the cash drawer and rode away. Initial reports put their take at $60,000. However, a few days later, it was reported that they might have gotten as little as five dollars. 

Afterward, McDowell remembered the robber muttering something about Sheets and Cox killing their brother, [Bloody] Bill Anderson, but he wasn’t clear on the details.