Charles E. Boles (c. 1829 – last seen February 28, 1888), also known as Black Bart, was an English-born American outlaw noted for the poetic messages he left behind after two of his robberies.

[1] Considered a gentleman bandit with a reputation for style and sophistication,[1] he was one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers to operate in and around Northern California and Southern Oregon during the 1870s and 1880s.

[2] When he was two years old, his parents immigrated to Jefferson County, New York, where his father purchased a farm four miles (6.4 km) north of Plessis Village in the direction of Alexandria Bay.

In late 1849, Boles and his brothers David and James joined in the California Gold Rush, prospecting in the North Fork of the American River near Sacramento.

In a surviving letter to his wife from August 1871, he told her of an unpleasant encounter with some Wells, Fargo & Company agents and vowed to exact revenge.

He dressed in a long linen duster coat and a bowler hat, using a flour sack with holes cut for his eyes as a mask.

He spoke with a deep and resonant tone as he politely ordered stage driver John Shine to "throw down the box".

Shine waited until Boles vanished and then went to recover the empty strongbox, but upon examining the area, he discovered that the "men with rifles" were actually carefully rigged sticks.

Boles committed his last holdup on November 3, 1883, at the site of his first robbery on Funk Hill, southeast of the present town of Copperopolis.

The detectives learned that Boles claimed to be a mining engineer and made frequent "business trips" that coincided with the Wells Fargo robberies.

After initially denying that he was Black Bart, Boles eventually admitted that he had robbed several Wells Fargo stages, though he confessed only to crimes committed before 1879.

The lone bandit left a verse that read:[citation needed] So here I've stood while wind and rain Have set the trees a-sobbin, And risked my life for that box, That wasn't worth the robbin.

After comparing it with the handwriting of genuine Black Bart poetry, he declared the new holdup was the work of a copycat criminal.

In the early 1870s, the Sacramento Union ran a story called The Case of Summerfield by Caxton (a pseudonym of William Henry Rhodes).

The villain, named Black Bart, robbed Wells Fargo stagecoaches and brought great fear to those who were unlucky enough to cross him.

The second verse was left at the site of his July 25, 1878, holdup of a stage traveling from Quincy to Oroville, California: Here I lay me down to sleep To wait the coming morrow, Perhaps success, perhaps defeat, And everlasting sorrow.

In South Lake Tahoe, California there is a Black Bart Avenue off of Pioneer Trail commemorating his poems.

[11] The first full length biography is Gentleman Bandit: The True Story of Black Bart, the Old West's Most Infamous Stagecoach Robber, written by John Boessenecker and published by Hanover Square Press in 2023.

Black Bart is a character in La Diligence (The Stagecoach), by Morris and Goscinny, a Lucky Luke comic book from 1968.

[12] In 1954, Arthur Space played Black Bart in the eponymous episode of Jim Davis's syndicated western television series, Stories of the Century.

Black Bart appears as a character in Bob Clark's 1983 film, A Christmas Story, though he is only a figment of Ralphie Parker's imagination.

The movie largely parallels Black Bart's life, such as the Northern California setting, the rigging sticks on rocks to give the impression that a group of armed men are aiming at a stagecoach, and the character of Brown being shot in the hand.

[14] The song "Black Bart" is the 10th track on the 2013 album Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies of heavy metal band Volbeat.