J. Wilkison (also known as Wilkinson or Wilkerson) Reno moved to Indiana in 1813 from the Salt River region of Kentucky, one of the Civil War border states.
Future gang members Franklin (Frank), John, Simeon (Sim), and William (Bill) Reno were born to the couple in Rockford, Jackson County, Indiana.
In their early years, the siblings were raised in a strict Methodist farming household and were required to read the Bible all day on Sunday, according to John Reno's 1879 autobiography.
The crimes caused considerable tension in the town and Wilkison and four of his sons fled, living near St. Louis, Missouri, for some time, before returning to their farm in 1860.
The American Civil War broke out shortly after and the brothers enlisted in hopes of escaping the angry citizens of the town.
Many residents of southern Indiana were sympathetic to the Confederate States of America or were Northern Democrats wanting peace (known as "Copperheads").
)[1] In 1864, Frank and John returned to Rockford, and a gang began to form under their leadership; Simeon and William joined them.
Late that year, Frank and two other gang members, Grant Wilson and a man named Dixon, robbed the post office and Gilbert's Store in nearby Jonesville, Indiana.
They terrorized the Midwest for several years and inspired a host of other similar gangs who copied their crimes, leading to several decades of high-profile train robberies.
The contents of the safe were insured by the Adams Express Company, which hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to track down and capture the gang.
John Reno was identified, arrested by Pinkerton agents, and sentenced to 25 years in the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1868.
A third train, owned by the Ohio & Mississippi, was stopped by six members of the gang on July 10, though the Reno brothers were not involved.
Waiting in ambush, however, were ten Pinkerton agents; a shootout ensued, and after several of the gang were wounded, the would-be robbers fled.
Using this information, the detectives arrested two more members of the gang, Charlie Roseberry and Theodore Clifton, the next day in Rockport.
However, on July 10, 1868, three miles outside Seymour, Indiana, the prisoners were taken off the train and hanged by the neck from a nearby tree by a group of masked men calling itself the Jackson County Vigilance Committee.
Three other gang members, Henry Jerrell, Frank Sparks, and John Moore, were captured shortly after in Illinois and returned to Seymour.
The day after their removal from Lexington, the vigilantes broke into the vacated jail, hoping to catch and lynch the men.
[5] Frank Reno, the gang's leader, and Charlie Anderson were tracked down to the Canadian border town of Windsor, Ontario.
After they beat the sheriff, Thomas Fullenlove, and shot him in the arm for refusing to turn over the keys, his wife surrendered them to the mob.
It was rumored that the vigilantes were part of the group known as the Scarlet Mask Society or Jackson County Vigilance Committee.