9/2/1913 - The life of notorious outlaw, Ezra Allen Miner, better known as Bill Miner, or "The Grey Fox" (after a book and movie by that name come out in the 1990s), or "The Gentleman Bandit," or "The Gentleman Robber," or "California Bill," a desperado said to have coined the bandit term, "Hands Up!" (it more likely comes from English highwaymen of the 17th-century) while robbing stagecoaches, ends in the state prison farm hospital of Milledgeville, Georgia, where the robber dies at the age of sixty-six from gastritis he caught the year before after ingesting a large amount of fetid swamp water during a failed escape attempt from the institution (the stolen boat he is escaping in capsizes and Miner almost drowns before reaching shore).
The Grey Fox
Ezra Miner is born in the Vevay Township (near Onondaga) of Ingham County, Michigan, to Joseph Miner and his wife, Harriet Jane Cole on December 27, 1846. Along with his parents, the family he becomes a part of includes his sister Harriet (born in 1836), his brother Henry (born in 1840), his sister Mary Jane (born in 1843), and his brother Joseph (born in 1853). In 1860, after Joseph Sr. dies in 1856 when Ezra is nine, Harriet packs up her three youngest children (Harriet is married and Henry enlists in the Union Army to fight for the North in the Civil War) and as part of a westbound wagon train, moves all the way across country to California, where she puts down stakes in the notorious Placer County mining town of Yankee Jims (about fifty miles to the east of Sacramento, the name comes from an Australian criminal who hid stolen horses in the area before gold is discovered there). It is a wild place on the edge of civilization where death comes to easily to residents and visitors alike in the form of shootings, knifings, beatings, and hangings, and there, changing his name from Ezra to William, the youth begins to display a proclivity for criminal behavior. Towards the end of the Civil War, in 1864, Miner travels to Sacramento and enlists in the Union Army as a private, but quits two months later when he recognizes he does not enjoy being ordered about and doing menial tasks, and deserts. At around the same time he falls under the sway of local "soiled dove" and to fuel the assignation, robs the man employing him of $300. Caught, the man refuses to press charges against the 18-year-old and Miner celebrates his freedom a couple of weeks later, now nineteen, by robbing the treasurer of Placer County on the streets of the mining community of Placerville (formerly Hangtown, so named, then on two stolen horses, riding to San Francisco to enjoy his loot. And when his wallet grows thin, he hooks up with another bad apple named John Sinclair and begins robbing travelers moving through the San Joaquin Valley near Stockton. After a few months of felonies however, the pair are captured, put on trial, and after being found guilty, sent off to San Quentin State Prison for a three year stay.
Placerville
San Quentin - 1871
His first time behind bars, the young outlaw is released in 1871 after serving his full sentence, and free, he jumps right back into a life of crime. Hooking up with an outlaw named "Alkali Jim" Harrington and a bandit named Charlie Cooper, the trio start plundering stagecoaches in California's Calaveras County ... but not for long. Harrington and Miner caught in the mining town of San Andreas, the men are found trying to saw their way out of confinement, are placed in heavy balls and chains, and then sent back to San Quentin for another stint behind bars (and there will be a failed escape attempt from the prison). Released once more (not a criminal mastermind, in all, mostly at San Quentin, Miner will spend more than 33 years of his life in jail and prison cells) on July 14, 1880, Miner decides that he might do better in life with a change in scenery, and takes a train to Colorado Springs, Colorado where his sister is living. Pretending to be a successful gentleman miner from the California gold fields, the outlaw soon recruits a youth from Iowa named Arthur Pond and Pond's brother, Silas (operating under the aliases of Billy and Silas LeRoy, for a brief time, Arthur/Billy will be known as "The King of the Rocky Mountain Bandits") as his new partners in crime and Colorado is beset by a series of stagecoach robberies about the state, the largest of which nets the outlaws more than $4,000 in cash. Sensing that remaining in Colorado might be dangerous to his health, Miner splits from his partners and goes back to Michigan where he visits family, and using the alias William A. Morgan, becomes engaged to the 20-year-old daughter of an Onondaga businessman, Jennie Louise Willis. After three months in Michigan, Miner is ready to move on again (after he burns through most of the cash he's plundered), and telling his fiancée he has to leave for awhile to take care of some mining matters in California, he heads west again (Jennie Louise will never see him again and back in Colorado in May of 1881, the Pond brothers are caught trying to take a stagecoach near the San Luis Valley town of Del Norte and lynched by the area's unhappy citizens).
Young Bill Miner
Colorado Springs - 1880
Arthur/Billy
Back in California, Miner hooks up with a group of horse thieves and robbers that includes Stanton T. Jones, Bill Miller, and James Crum. New gang, but the same results, trying to rob a stagecoach outside the mining town of Sonora, Crum and Miner are caught by Wells Fargo detectives and sent to San Quentin, this time on a 20-25 year armed robbery beef. In San Quentin for a third time, Miner for the most part behaves himself but still manages to get into trouble from time to time ... he almost has his throat cut during a fight with another convict, and figuring out a way to break the lock on his cell, survives a failed escape attempt in which a guard kills his partner in the plot, Joe Marshall, with a blast from his shotgun that barely misses Miner. His longest stretch behind bars, 54-year-old Miner is finally released from the prison on June 17, 1901 and again decides to visit his family, this time, venturing north to the state of Washington where his sisters, Harriet and Mary Jane, and his niece, Mary Jane's married daughter Dora. For a time, he holds down a legitimate job harvesting oysters from the oyster bed his family owns on Samish Bay.
Miner
But by this time Miner is a hard core bandit, and after two years of what he considers unadulterated drudgery, the outlaw teams up with his former San Quentin cellmate, John "Cowboy Jake" Terry, another San Quentin alum, Gary Harshman, and a young teenager from the nearby socialist community, Equality Colony named Charles Hoehn. Stagecoaches no longer a viable source of wealth, the rookies decide to rob the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company's passenger train to Chicago near the town of Clarnie, about 10 miles east of Portland, on Saturday, September 19, 1903. Bungled of course, though the men try and flag the train down, it ignores their waving and goes on its merry way to Chicago instead of stopping. Undaunted, the gang goes after another train four nights later near the town of Troutdale, but their results are even worse than on their first job. Access to the train gained, the robbers use dynamite to blow off the doors of the express car, but flee with no money when a hidden messenger unloads a load of buckshot into Harshman's head. Found later when Multnomah County Sheriff William Storey and Pinkerton Detective Agency Captain James Nevins show up at the scene of the crime later that night. Somehow surviving being shot in the face, eventually Harshman gives up his confederates, and when Hoehn is arrested, he in turn tells where Miner can be found, but when the authorities finally show up at the 160-acre homestead of the outlaw's sister and husband, they are a day late. Fleeing the United States for awhile, Miner becomes George Edwards, a mining engineer with gold holdings in Argentina that makes Princeton, British Columbia, a locale 50 miles east of Vancouver, his new base of operations.
Terry
Pinkerton Poster
Miner
Though he is well liked about town (he builds an ice rink for a little girl who wants to go skating though there are no ponds in Princeton), needing a crook's adrenaline rush once more, Miner, Terry, and a new recruit from the area, an American named J. William Grell who is operating in Canada under the alias of William J. "Shorty" Dunn. hit the Canadian Pacific Railway Transcontinental Express #1 outside the town of Mission (40 miles east of Vancouver). Striking at around 9:30 on the evening of September 10, 1904, using a dense ground fog as their ally, everything finally right for the gang and the robbers ride off into the night after thirty minutes of plundering the railway with $1,000 in cash, $6,000 in gold dust, $50,000 in U.S. government bonds, and another $250,000 in Australian securities securities (the first successful train robbery in the area in over 30 years, compliments of a cocked pistol being thrust into the face of express messenger Herbert Mitchell, who opens the car's safe for the bandits). A clean getaway sets the men up for life (the rewards for info on the bandits goes up to $11,500), but the itch to rob and ride hits Miner again in 1905, and he and Terry (absent from his friend's capture, in 1907 the gunman will take two .38 slugs to the head and be killed by a telegraph lineman named Gust Lindey, angered into murder by the outlaw sleeping with his wife), using dynamite on the train's safe rob the eastbound Great Northern Railway Flyer outside of Seattle, Washington taking $36,000 in gold bullion, then in 1906, Miner, Dunn, and Louis Colquhoun hit the westbound Canadian Pacific Railway Imperial Limited No. 97 train at Ducks, British Columbia, 17 miles east of Kamloops ... a bungled job due to uncoupling the wrong car and leaving it back at the train station that nets the men only $15.50 and a box of catarrh pills for upset stomachs and liver problems. Mounties, railway detectives, cowboys sworn in as special constables, Siwash Indian trackers, bloodhounds, and on the American side of the border, police officers and Pinkerton agents. Given a second opportunity "to get their man," working in conjunction with a posse led by B.C. Provincial Police Constable William L. Fernie, a detachment of Royal Canadian Northwest Mounted Police under the command of Sergeant J. J. Wilson locates the trail of the outlaws, follows it south, and on Monday, May 14, surrounds the bandits at a place called Douglas Lake and demands their surrender. Miner and Colquhoun comply, but Dunn draws his pistol and is rewarded with a bullet to his leg. Secured, the men are transported to Quilchena, where Dunn's wound is treated, then are brought to Kamloops in a borrowed buckboard for trial at the British Columbia provincial court.
Manhunters
Shorty Dunn
Colquhoun
Miner
Somehow, the first trial of the defendants ends in a hung jury (throughout, Miner insists he is George Edwards, even when the warden of San Quentin identifies him as being the stagecoach robber, William Miner). The second trial goes much better for the authorities ... evidence presented during the day of Saturday, June 1, the jury unanimously brings back a verdict of guilty later that same night (the most damning bit of evidence is Miner being in possession of the liver pills). Not happy that an American criminal would seek plunder in Canada, and that a good part of the population sees Miner as a folk hero for his battles against the evil railroads of both countries, presiding judge P. A. E. Irving decides to throw the book at Miner and Dunn (a model prisoner, Dunn will have his sentenced reduced from life to fifteen years, is paroled in May of 1915, becomes a Canadian citizen under his real name, J. William Grell, and dies hunting for gold in northern British Columbia when the canoe he is guiding capsizes in the cold waters of Testa River in 1927) and sentences both men to life in prison at the British Columbia Penitentiary at New Westminster, while Colquhoun is sentenced to 25 years behind bars (suffering from tuberculosis, he will die at the prison's hospital in 1911).
The Prisoners Arrive
On Trial
Ongoing Construction At The B.C. Pen
Intensely watched and kept in maximum security during his first year in prison (Miner has boasted that no prison walls can hold him), the prison staff, thinking Miner is a kindly old man too aged and feeble for any escapes, eventually relaxes their guard on the bandit, only to discover the error of their way on August 8, 1907, when the outlaw, and three other convicts, tunnel under a board fence, obtain a ladder from a work shed, scale a 12-foot wall, and vanish from the institution without anyone being the wiser. His partners captured shortly after their escape, Miner gets away and is never seen in Canada again. Later, it will be determined that the tunnel (too small for Miner to slink through), ladder, and fellow escapees are all mere props, and that the outlaw has actually secretly bribed his way to freedom by agreeing to return the $300,000 (the equivalent of nine million dollars in modern money) in securities and bonds he hid in 1904 after the Mission train robbery. Embarrassed, the Canadian government, after much back-and-forth in parliament, decides not to institute a full inquiry into the incident. Slipping back into the United States, using loot he has hidden over the years, Miner sets up shop in Denver and begins living a lavish life of wine, women, fine clothes, and good food ... until the money runs out. Almost broke, Miner travels back to Michigan and once again begins thinking of his next heist and recruiting new confederates, eventually settling on an acquaintance named Charles Hunter, and an itinerant laborer from Nebraska that he meets while working at a sawmill, James Hanford.
Wanted Poster
Shorn In Prison
Georgia selected because it has never experienced a train robbery and Miner believes the state authorities won't know how to react, at 4:00 in the morning on Saturday, February 18, 1911, near White Sulfur Springs, Georgia the three outlaws hit the Southern Railway fast mail train No. 36 (the train is headed from New Orleans to New York City) for $2,200 in loot. Loot that the bandits never have a chance to spend because the trio are all behind bars four days after the robbery. Placed on trial in Gainesville, the guilty men are advised of their futures on March 3, 1911 ... mastermind Miner is sentenced to 20 years behind bars, while Hunter and Hanford, who both are sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. The men begin serving their sentences on the chain gang of the Newton County Convict Camp at Covington, Georgia on March 15, 1911 ... and the 64-year-old Miner begins planning his next escape. Claiming his health is too poorly to work on a chain gang, Miner is transferred to the Georgia State Prison Farm at Milledgeville on July 8, 1911. Three months later, with the support of two other inmates, Miner is in the wind again. This time his freedom lasts a couple of weeks. Wisely surrendering when a posse surrounds the men and one of the convicts is killed in a shootout (put in cuffs, the outlaw will be heard to mutter, "I guess I'm getting too old for this sort of thing."), Miner is returned to Milledgeville at the beginning of November and starts thinking about his next exit. The beginning of the end, again accompanied by two other desperate convicts, Miner escapes Milledgeville once more on June 27, 1912. This time to lose any posses that might be chasing them, the men venture into a swamp near the town of Toomsboro, only 20 miles away from the prison farm. Instead of the swamp helping the flight of the convicts though, the swamp proves to be the undoing of the group when the small boat the prisoners have stolen capsizes and Miner almost drowns in the fetid wet he's pitched into. Found shivering and close to death in an abandoned boxcar, the outlaw is brought back to Milledgeville, and now too weak for flight, he stays put for the last year of his life, tending to a small flower garden within the prison walls and giving a friendly detective his version of the major adventures of his life. Frail, he finally is put in one of the prison's hospital beds suffering from the gastritis he picked up gulping down swamp water during his last escape attempt. The stomach affliction does in Miner on September 2, 1913.
Miner
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