COLE YOUNGER HERE.

YOUNGER, JAMES

Posted By: Nancee Seifert (email)
Date: 11/30/2009 at 16:42:47

Decatur County Journal
Leon, Iowa
Thursday, April 13, 1911

'Former Outlaw Lectured in Leon Tuesday Evening Upon What Life had Taught
Him'

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Cole Younger, the last of the famous Younger brothers many years ago charged
with many robberies in the middle west, delivered a lecture at the opera
house in this city Tuesday evening to a good sized audience. Those who went
expecting to hear him devote his entire lecture to his career as an outlaw
were very disappointed. The last part of his lecture was devoted to that
matter.

His lecture contained much good advice to the young men and he urged that
they profit by his experience and lead lives of usefulness and take
advantage of the great opportunities that the present affairs.

In the last of his lecture he told of his service in the confederate army
and his connection with the forces of Quantrell, the Guerilla leader, during
the troublesome times along the Kansas and Missouri borders, of in later
years how himself and a few others repelled the attempt of a mob to capture
him at his home in Jackson County, Missouri. He stated that at the time it
was reported that a train had been held up and robbed in Iowa by Cole
Younger and the James boys, he was at Osceola, Mo., and had witnesses at
that time to prove that such was the case. He told of his journeys to
southern states, his attempt to enter the cattle business in Texas, and the
events that led up to the robbery of the Northfield, Minn., bank, and his
final capture and conviction. He spent twenty-five years in the state
penitentiary of Minnesota at Stillwater.

He stated during the course of his lecture, that he had been wounded
twenty-two times and that a number of the bullets still remained in his body
His lecture was interesting and he was given the close attention of the
audience all the way through. He stated that he had been greatly
misrepresented. He told of one incident wherein some detectives upon their
own account, reinforced by a number of men that they had employed along the
way, had come down into Missouri to effect the capture of the Younger
brothers. Learning of their intentions and deciding that it would be an
easy matter for him to convince the detectives that he was in Missouri at
the time the train in Iowa was robbed and turn them back, he and several of
his friends went out to met them. On a country road they met them and Cole
said he halted them and asked who they were looking for. They replied that
they were looking for Cole Younger and his associates and he told that they
did not need to look further as the stood before them.

The men who had been employed by the detectives, Mr. Younger stated, were
quickly following them. A newspaper reporter, a member of the party, also
hurried away at great speed and the conference did not occur. The newspaper
man got lost in the timber and ran across an old cemetery. An article then
appeared in the public prints, Mr. Younger says, stating that the newspaper
man had found the burying ground where the Younger brothers laid their vill
(?) at rest. He stated that the only time that he was ever in Iowa previous
to this was when he passed through the state enroute to Minnesota, when the
robbery of the Northfield bank occurred.

He is 68 years old.
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Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
November 30, 2009
iggy29@grm.net