Countdown to 250 - June 30, 2026

 

 

Celebrating America's 250th Anniversary with five days of banners depicting our country's birth and heritage.

The Strange Case of Lizzie Borden

 

Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden is the stuff from which legends are made. Schoolchildren recite poetry about her while adults revel in the gory details of her crimes.

Unfortunately, little is known about Lizzie’s inner life.

She was thirty-two at the time her parents were killed. Her sister, Emma was forty-one. The girls lived at home, unattached, with their father and stepmother.

Lizzie’s father, Andrew J. Borden, was most often described as peculiar. A Puritan type, more interested in acquiring money than living life. He got his start as a furniture dealer, partnering with William L. Almy. When Almy retired, they dissolved the business, and Borden began investing in real estate. Over time, he made some shrewd moves and wound up owning many of the city’s choicest properties.

When he died, Borden’s real estate holdings totaled over $170,000. In addition, he held stock in the cotton mill, bank, and other business concerns valued at several hundred thousand dollars more. John T. Burrell, the cashier of the Union Bank, valued Borden’s estate at $200,000 to $300,000 (just under $10 million today).

Alfred Packer, The Colorado Cannibal

 

Alfred Packer aprroaching fort 

Alfred Griner Packer, sometimes called Alferd Packer, was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on July 21, 1842. His family moved to Indiana in the early 1850s. Packer enlisted in the Union army in Minnesota in April 1862, listing his occupation as a shoemaker. He received an honorable discharge at Fort Ontario, New York, Eight months later.

Packer enlisted in the Union army again at Ottumwa, Iowa, in June 1863. He was mustered out less than a year later. The discharge papers said Packer had epilepsy in both instances—constantly going in and out of seizures—which kept him from performing his duties.

The nine years after Packer left the service are a blur.

Some historians say he traveled up and down the Rocky Mountains, prospecting and working odd jobs. Others implicate him in several murders and robberies throughout Colorado, California, and Utah. However, no documentation shows that Packer was wanted for committing any crimes. So, we can assume the accusations were more wishful thinking, trying to make Alfred Packer appear worse than he was.

In November 1873, Packer played a bluff, pretending to be an experienced guide familiar with mountain travel. Bob McGrue hired him to guide nineteen prospectors to the newly discovered gold and silver mines in the San Juan Mountains.

Things went wrong almost from the start. Heavy snow and freezing temperatures battered the area, making travel nearly impossible. Finally, after three months, the men stumbled into Chief Ouray’s camp near present-day Montrose, Colorado.

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.