Perilous Trails, Dangerous Men: Early California Stagecoach Robbers and Their Desperate Careers 1856-1900 - Softcover

Secrest, William B

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1884995241 ISBN 13: 9781884995248

Publisher: Word Dancer Press, 2001

Synopsis

Punctuated by gunshots and posse hoofbeats, these true tales, many told for the first time, illustrate, in both words and rare photographs, perilous trails and dangerous men from a time gone forever. Profiling men such as stagecoach robber Shorty Harris, who just wanted to buy a restaurant with his loot and find some peace, and Black Bart, the most famous stagecoach robber ever, who robbed 28 stages in eight years and between robberies led the life of a society gentleman in San Francisco, this collection illustrates a desperate breed of fascinating characters who added their stories to the legends of the Old West.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Fresno, California, in March of 1930, William B. Secrest grew up in the great San Joaquin Valley. After high school he joined the Marine Corps where he served in a guard detachment and in a rifle company in the early years of the Korean War. Returning to college, he obtained a BA in education, but for many years he served as an art director for a Fresno advertising firm.

Secrest has been interested in history since his youth and early began comparing Western films to what really happened in the West. A hobby at first, this avocation quickly developed into correspondence with noted writers and more serious research. Not satisfied in a collaboration with friend and Western writer Ray Thorp, Secrest began researching and writing his own articles in the early 1960s.

Although at first he wrote on many general Western subjects, some years ago Secrest realized how his home state has consistently been neglected in the Western genre and concentrated almost exclusively on early California subjects. He has produced hundreds of articles for such publications as Westways, Montana, True West, and the American West, while publishing seven monographs on early California themes. His book I Buried Hickok (Early West Publishing Co.) appeared in 1980, followed by Lawmen & Desperadoes (The Arthur H. Clark Co.) in 1994 and Dangerous Trails (Barbed Wire Press) in 1995. A biography of noted San Francisco police detective Isaiah Lees has been accepted for publication. A current project is a biography of Harry Love, the leader of the rangers who tracked down Joaquin Murrieta.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

John Allen

alias "Sheet-Iron Jack"

(Real name John D. Gundlack)

Hero, liar, thief, or just plain scoundrel, perhaps Jack Allen was all of that, and more. He was certainly a character, in any case.

Author's collection.

The Civil War honed and positively developed the characters of many who participated in this most terrible of American conflicts. But there were those who were adversely affected, also. For some the war was an excuse for their later failings. Others merely needed the push into crime provided by a rough, male society in a gold-mad and hectic period of history.

Born in New York State about 1849, John Gundlack enlisted in the 32nd Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment in March 1864 at the age of fifteen. He lost a finger and suffered other injuries while participating in the siege of Petersburg in early 1864. His unit suffered severe battle casualties and he was mustered out in Virginia on July 15, 1865. His war wounds are fully described in army medical records and match his physical description in San Quentin prison records. An older brother had been killed at Antietam.

Perhaps ex-soldier Gundlack had gotten into trouble of some kind, for he apparently headed west immediately after his discharge. One account states he met a frontiersman named Hoag in San Francisco, and together they were hired as scouts or packers at Fort Crook in Shasta County. Somewhere along the way, Gundlack changed his name to John Allen. He was in southern Oregon in late September of 1866, where he claimed to have joined a party of civilians accompanying Captain Samuel Munson, 9th Infantry, and thirty troopers chasing Indian horse thieves. When one of the party, rancher John Townsend, was killed in an ambush, the party retreated. Although this is a documented incident, there is no documentation of Allen's participation.

Years later, Allen also claimed to have joined General George Crook's command as a scout and guide, but verification, again, is lacking. In September of 1867, Allen was ordered to climb a bluff near Steen's Mountain to scout and give signals for an attack. To protect himself, he strapped a large camp frying pan to his chest and was afterwards called "Sheet-Iron Jack." He also asserted that he had been in the party that rescued a "Miss Hattie Henderson" who had been carried off by the Indian war party that had captured a stagecoach and murdered her father and cousin. This seems to be another fantasy, based on an incident in which a family named Pierson was murdered by Indians in early 1868. There was a stagecoach captured by the Indians in November, 1866, in the same northeastern part of California. But no one was killed or captured, and again, Jack seems to have inserted himself into a real incident in order to utilize his hero status for his own purposes at a later date.

In 1873, Allen claimed to have carried the mail between Klamath, Oregon, and the lava beds during the Modoc War, but a search of records in the National Archives failed to turn up his name. It is perhaps significant to recognize that all these heroic claims were made at the time Allen was trying to secure a pardon from prison.

Reportedly a barber in Tehama County during the mid-1870s, Allen also was a laborer who sheared sheep and did other odd jobs. He was frequently drunk and in trouble, and when his purse got too light, horse theft and other types of thievery were not beneath him, either. In early 1875, he was sentenced to San Quentin for two years when he tried to rob a blind old farmer named Dersche and his wife. In the custody of Deputy Sheriff Harold, Jack boarded the Shasta stage on the evening of February 18 for his one-way trip to state prison. The coach had gone some two miles from town when it was unceremoniously stopped, as reported by District

Attorney Clay W. Taylor, who had convicted Jack:

The stage left town about 7 o'clock, Jerry Culverhouse driving, with old man Harold, and a prisoner, John Allen, alias "Sheet-Iron Jack," and two or more passengers on board. When they arrived at the foot of the hill, just below Lower Springs, and while the team were in a trot, some men (They say there were three) stepped out, and one cried halt or stop, being nearly opposite the driver when he spoke. He spoke low, and Jerry gave his horses a cut with the whip, and they made several jumps, when one of the men fired with a shotgun, hitting Jerry in the head and shoulders.The driver was badly wounded, but he held on to the horses until they stopped down the road. A passenger took the lines and the coach then returned to Shasta. All the way back to town, "Sheet-Iron Jack cussed the robbers," noted a local newspaper, "until the air smelled like brimstone He said that it was an unmitigated outrage that a man could not be permitted to travel over Shasta County territory, especially when he was on his way to work for the interest of the state, without having his life endangered by shots fired by murderous highwaymen." As a posse was being organized in town, a new driver was secured, and the stage again headed for Redding and other points south. When passing through Red Bluff on the stage, Jack seemed quite unconcerned about the incident as reported in the People's Cause, February 20, 1875: Did not agree with him. - "Sheet-Iron Jack," while passing through this town on his way from Shasta to San Quentin, where he will work for the benefit of the state, or the prison contractors, for the next two years, when asked by one of our citizens where he was going, replied, "I am going where I can get some sea breeze; this Northern climate does not agree with my health and I must make a change."

About this edition

• Publisher: Word Dancer Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1884995241
• ISBN 13: 9781884995248
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272