Customer Reviews

A Dynasty of Western Outlaws

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Paul Wellman's A Dynasty of Western Outlaws is a 20th Century standard of outlaw history. It is an extremely well written work and belongs in any library of crime history or the "Old West." Wellman, who was a police reporter in Wichita in the 1920's, was one of the first authors to comprehend and explore the connections between Midwestern outlaws of the post-Civil War era and the Depression gangs of the 1930's. That makes this book a useful starting point for anyone interested in the outlaw period. Unfortunately, there are errors throughout the work: Jesse and Frank James were not cousins of the Youngers, only partners in crime; recent research by other authors make it doubtful that Cole Younger fathered Belle Starr's daughter Pearl; Henry Starr was never a member of the Cook gang; Al Spencer was not one of the Stroud bank robbers; etc., etc., etc. And the chapters on '20's outlaws Eddie Adams and Al Spencer, on which Wellman seems to have relied too heavily on his own memory, and on "Pretty Boy" Floyd, are sketchy and highly inaccurate. Wellman's insights are good and his basic premise of an "outlaw dynasty" from Quantrill to Floyd is sound but his facts need to be checked against other sources.

The University of Nebraska Press is one of my favorite collegiate publishers. Through its Bison Books imprint, it has published important works on the history of the American West for decades. It has reprinted some of the most essential books on the old west that are in the public domain for new generations of readers. A Dynasty of Outlaws is a fascinating study of the spread of evil and outlawyerly in the historic west. While generations of newspapermen, screenwriters and novelists have glorified and romanticized the outlaw; in reality they were men - and occasionally women - who, like all criminals, preyed on their neighbors. The banks that they robbed were not the multi-nationals of today, but small local businesses that held the savings of the merchants, farmers and ranchers. While large corporations owned the trains that they held up, the money that was carried in them was not, nor were the intimate belongings of the citizens that the highwayman held up and traumatized. Paul Wellman (1898-1966) wrote is book which was first published in 1966 and his fascinating thesis is that crime has a "contagious nature" and he traces the criminal gangs of the old west back to the James-Younger gang and the training that they received from the infamous Civil War criminal William C. Quantrill. He then connects the bloody family tree of criminal gangs to the Dalton, Doolin and Belle Starr gangs that evolved from them. Wellman follows this association of criminality into this century when bank robbery re-emerged again. "A Dynasty of Western Outlaws" is not only a rich mine of western lore but an important view into the nature of criminality. Jeffrey Morseburg

Sometime-journalist, sometime-novelist Wellman's history of bad guys who terrorized the American Wild West from the period following the Civil War to the early half of the 20th Century is excellently written and presented. He very interestingly traces the links -- sometimes by blood, sometimes by mere acquaintance or "apprenticeship" -- between the most infamous Western bad guys from William Clark Quantrill during the Bloody Kansas period preceding the Civil War to the death of Pretty Boy Floyd. Highly recommended to fans of Western fiction and general readers who want to know more about Western history.

While the book contains very interesting material regarding the roots of western outlaws in the years after the Civil War, some individual facts leave a bit to be desired. All in all a good read, but I would encourage further reading on some subjects, or at least double-checking some of the facts used in the book.