Charles Earl Bowles: The Most Famous Criminal

Most criminals were rude and very uncivil, but Black Bart was very different from all the other criminals. He was polite, and he left poems after he left the scene of the crime! Black Bart was an infamous criminal in the late 19th Century, he committed his first crime on August 17, 1875.To many people, he was known as Charles Earl It is very unclear when Charles Earl Bowles was born, but we know he was born in Norfolk County, England in 1829, to John Bowles and Maria Leggett Bowles. Charles or Charley, also had 8 other siblings, 3 sisters, Harriet, Lucy, and Maria, and 6 brothers, Hiram, William, James, John, and Robert. In 1831, the large family moved to Jefferson County, located in upstate New York. They lived 4 miles north of Plessis Village, near Alexandria Bay. In 1849, Charley and his cousin David went out towards the gold fields. They stopped in St. Joseph or or Independence, Missouri for the winter before heading straight to the mines. In 1852, after a year in the mines, he headed back home, only to find that his younger brother Robert had suddenly died. …show more content…
On the road, both Robert and David fell ill and passed away before they got to the gold mines. Charley still kept going despite the fact that his only companions were gone. Once Charley got to the gold fields, he stayed and mined for another two years before he traveled to Illinois, where he met Mary Elizabeth Johnson and were married in 1854. Together the couple had four healthy children, Ida, Eva, Frances, and Arian Boles. It is unknown when and why Charles started to be called Black