Old West Outlaws - Last Name Begins With "D"

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Emmett Dalton (1871-1937) -- Born in Missouri in 1871, Emmett Dalton was the youngest of 15 children. It was Emmett, who was working as a cowboy on the Bar X Bar Ranch in Oklahoma, that met most of the other men who would become part of the Dalton Gang , including Bill Doolin, Bill Power, Charley Pierce, George "Bitter Creek" Newcomb, Bill EcElhanie, Charlie Bryant, and Richard (Dick) Broadwell. Emmett participated in the Coffeyville, Kansas raid that killed his brothers, Bob and Grat, as well as Bill Power and Dick Broadwell. Though Emmett was wounded, he survived to stand trial in Independence, Kansas five months after the robbery.

He plead guilty to murdering a Coffeyville citizen and was sentenced to life in prison at the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing. After fourteen and one-half years in prison, Emmett Dalton was pardoned by E. W. Hoch, governor of Kansas, in 1907. On September 1, 1908 Emmett married Julia Johnson Gilstrap Lewis in Bartlesville, Oklahoma before settling in Tulsa. Emmett worked as a police officer in Tulsa for a couple of years before the pair moved to California. In California, Emmett worked as a building contractor and later would write a book about the exploits of the Dalton Gang entitled "When The Daltons Rode." Written in collaboration with Jack Jungmeyer, a Los Angeles Newspaperman, the book was published in 1931. Emmett died quietly at his home in Long Beach, California on July 13, 1937. Emmett was cremated and his ashes were returned to Kingfisher, Oklahoma for burial. More ...

Grattan “Grat”  Dalton (1865-1892) – Grattan Dalton was born in 1865 near Lawrence, Kansas, one of fifteen children. The family moved to Indian Territory in 1882. Grat took his brother, Frank's job as a U.S. Deputy Marshal after Frank was killed on November 27,1887. Two years later, in 1889, he was working as a Deputy Marshal for the Muskogee court in Indian Territory. That same year he received a bullet in his arm while attempting to arrest a suspect. Later, he and his brothers would turn to a life of crime, robbing their first train with brother, Bill Dalton, just outside of Los Angeles, California in 1891.

John Daly - (1839-1864) - Arriving in Aurora, Nevada from California in the early 1860's as a hired gun, Daly soon hooked up with "Three-Fingered Jack" McDowell and the two ran an unsavory saloon and operated the Daly Gang which terrorized the Nevada gold fields between Aurora and Carson City. Using scare tactics known as "criminal vigilantism," they lynched anyone who resisted. The saloon quickly became known as a place where beatings, gunfights, mayhem, and murder were the norm. McDowell , Daly and two other men named William Buckley and Jim Masterson, bullied the town and cheated any card players that were foolish enough to frequent McDowell's saloon. However, after the gang cut a man's throat and threw him in to Aurora's dusty street, the fed up citizens formed a vigilante group and attacked McDowell's saloon on February 5, 1864. Dragging McDowell, Daly, Buckley, and Masterson from the saloon, they locked them up while they quickly constructed a gallows. A short time later, all for men were hanged outside Armory Hall in Aurora.

Isom Dart aka: Ned Huddleston (1849-1900) - Born into slavery in Arkansas in 1849 Ned helped Confederate soldiers steal food and goods during the Civil War. After he was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, he drifted into Texas and Mexico, working as a rodeo clown. However, he soon turned to cattle rustling in Mexico, moving the herds across the boundary and selling them in Texas. Though he tried to go straight many times in his life, he never quite succeeded, always returning to rustling. Over the years he also worked as a prospector, broke broncos and rode with the Gault Gang. In 1875 he moved to northwest Colorado where he was involved in gambling and and a number of fights. However, he tried to go straight again when he bought a ranch near Brown's Hole and changed his name to Isom Dart. In 1899, during the Brown’s Park range war between the Two-Bar Ranch Cattle Company and area ranchers, he took up with Ann Bassett, a ranch owner and cattle rustler herself. Soon the Two-Bar Ranch brought in Range Detective Tom Horn to suppress the cattle rustling and threaten the smaller ranches. In July, Dart received a note specifying that he and certain ranchers must leave the area. However, Dart chose to ignore the demand and on the morning of October 3rd, Tom Horn shot him dead.

Roy Daugherty, aka: Arkansas Tom Jones (1870-1924) - Raised in a highly religious family in Missouri, his two brothers became preachers, but Roy rebelled against the atmosphere and fled from home when he was only 14 years-old. Making his way to Oklahoma , he called himself "Arkansas Tom Jones," claiming to be from there. He first took a job as a cowboy but soon joined Bill Doolin's gang and was captured after the shootout at Ingalls, Oklahoma on September 1, 1893. Convicted of manslaughter, he was sentenced to a fifty-year prison term. Due to the efforts of this ministering brothers, he obtained a parole in 1910. He then ran a restaurant in Drumright, Oklahoma, for two years, but bored with that he drifted to Hollywood, hoping to act in Westerns. That not panning out, he returned to robbery and helped in robbing a bank in Neosho in 1917. Again, he was caught and imprisoned but released in 1921. Evidently, this man could just not be rehabilitated because he was robbed a bank once more in Ashbury, Missouri the same year he was released. He remained a wanted man for three years, but was tracked to Joplin, Missouri on August 16, 1924 and killed in a gunfight while resisting arrest.

John Herbert Dillinger (1903-1934) - Born of a farmer in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 28, 1903, John would grow up to be one of the nation's most notorious bank robbers during the depression era. In his youth, he developed a rebellious reputation and when he was old enough, joined the U.S. Navy, but deserted after only a few months. He then turned to a life of crime, robbing a local grocer in Mooresville, Indiana in September, 1924. Arrested and convicted he spent the next nine years in prison, before being released in May, 1933. Almost immediately, he gathered up a group of men and began to rob banks across Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin. This, of course, quickly put him on the FBI's most wanted list and he was relentlessly pursued. He was finally betrayed by a prostitute named Anna Sage, who lead him into a trap at Chicago's Biograph Theater. When the pair were leaving the theater, FBI agents were waiting and opened fire on the notorious bank robber, hailing him with bullets on July 22, 1934.

Cornelius "Lame Johnny" Donahue (1850-1878) - A lawman and an outlaw, Donahue attended college in Philadelphia but moved to Texas to become a cowboy. However, because of a physical he didn't fair well and turned to horse thievery. In the 1870s, Donahue left Texas and wound up in Deadwood, South Dakota, where he was hired as a deputy sheriff. Some time later, he was working in the mines and was recognized as the Texas horse thief that he was. He fled Deadwood and returned to his old lifestyle of stealing horses and added stagecoach robbery to his "job" tasks. In one robbery he was said to have taken about $3,500 in currency, $500 in diamonds, hundreds of dollars worth of jewelry, and 700 pounds of gold dust, nuggets and bullion from a special “treasure coach” called the "Monitor" belonging to the Homestake Mine. With a take like that, the law was quickly on his tale and he was soon tracked down by livestock detective, Frank Smith, who arrested him. However, as Smith was returning Donahue to Deadwood, the stagecoach was pulled over by a masked rider who took Johnny from the coach. The officials first assumed that he had been "saved" by one of his outlaw cohorts, but that was not the case. The next day, "Lame Johnny" was found hanging from a tree. When he was buried, his headstone, which is long since missing, read:

Pilgrim Pause! You’re standing on
The molding clay of Limping John.
Tread lightly, stranger, on this sod.
For if he moves, you’re robbed, by God

Robert "Bob" Dozier (18??-1878) - Before turning to a life of crime, Bob Dozier was a prosperous farmer. Unlike most Oklahoma outlaws of the time, Dozier was not forced by “need” to take up thievery, but evidently “chose” the lifestyle, perhaps for adventure, perhaps for greed – no one really knows.  What is known is that once he took up the life of crime, he was as successful at that as he had been at farming. A clever outlaw, he was a “jack-of-all-trades,” involved in a wide variety of crimes that made him an extremely difficult man to apprehend.  His varied misdeeds included thievery of every imaginable kind including cattle rustling, robbing stores and banks, holding up stagecoaches, and taking the last bit of a cash from a lonely riders on the trail.  He was also the leader of a horse stealing ring, acted as a fence for stolen jewels, and was involved in a number of land swindles.  After years of being pursued by lawmen, he was finally tracked down by U.S. Deputy Bass Reeves in the Cherokee Hills of Oklahoma. When Reeves demanded that Dozier surrender, the outlaw refused and gun battle erupted, the result of which left Dozier dead on December 20, 1878.

Jack Dunlap (or Dunlop), aka: Three Fingered Jack (18??- 1900) - In the 1890's, Dunlap was robbing banks and trains in Arizona before being arrested. Following his release in 1895, he joined "Black Jack" Christian's Gang, and later the Alvord-Stiles Gang , again holding up trains. On February 15, 1900, several membres of the Alvord-Stiles Gang, including Jack Dunlap, Burt Alvord, Bill Stiles, George and Louis Owens, Bravo Juan Yoas, and Bob Brown attempted to rob the Wells Fargo Express car at the Southern Pacific railroad depot in Fairbank, Arizona. However, what they didn't know was that Jeff Milton, a former Texas Ranger, was working as the express messenger that night. In the inevitable gunplay that occurred, Milton was clipped in the arm, outlaw Bravo Juan Yaos was shot, and Dunlap lay dead. The rest of the gang made their escape without ever opening the safe.

William B. Dunn (18??-1896) - Dunn and his brothers, Bee, Calvin, Dal, and George, ran a road ranch near Ingalls, Oklahoma, for travelers looking for a place to eat and rest. Sometimes, these travelers that made the mistake of stopping were robbed, killed, and never seen again. The Dunn brothers sometimes acted as bounty hunters and helped law officers track down outlaws. Dunn also owned a meat market in Pawnee, Oklahoma where he disposed of cattle he and his brothers had stolen. When Charley Pierce and George "Bitter Creek" Newcomb , members of the Doolin Gang, stopped at the Dunn Ranch to see Rose Dunn, Newcomb's teenage girlfriend, her brothers turned them in for the reward and both were killed by lawmen. Dunn also led Heck Thomas and his posse to the hiding place of Bill Doolin on August 25, 1896. When Thomas demanded Doolin's surrender, the outlaw pulled his six-gun and fired twice before a blast from Bill Dunn's shot gun cut him to pieces. The people of the county began to get angry over Dunn's tactics and on November 6, 1896 he blamed Deputy Sheriff Frank Canton for the brutal way in which Newcomb and Pierce had been killed.  Canton soon confronted Dunn and when Bill pulled his revolver, Canton put a slug in his forehead, killing him instantly.

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