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ALS, one page both sides, 8 x 12.5, June 3, 1900. Addressed from the Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater, a handwritten letter to Cora Lee McNeill, the former girlfriend of his brother, James Younger. In part: “I will try to write you this eve but haven’t any word of news of importance to communicate. We are both well and I suppose Jim will write you to day. But I don’t care I have stood back so long I will write any way. I felt like a…the day after you was here it seemed to me that I had forgotten every thing I wanted to say to you until you had gone and had I been down there before dinner and had known you were here I would have sent the Warden. But I did not know you had come until 2-3 o’clock and then the warden was gone. You did not tell me about Clair…While I was so sorry I hope he will have better luck with the last one if it had been in my power I would have sent him the money.” In fine condition.
Cole and Jim Younger began their life of crime during the Civil War as members of the notorious Quantrill's Raiders. The brothers avoided arrest longer than many other outlaws due to the sympathy and support of many of their fellow Confederate veterans. However, in 1876, the Younger luck ran dry when their attempted bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, went famously awry. Armed townsfolk disrupted the robbery, chased off the gang, and in the ensuing melee, two townspeople were killed. When the Youngers were finally captured, they were tried and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater—a guilty plea saved them from the hangman's noose. After two years of legislative wrangling, a parole bill was passed in Minnesota's legislature and Cole Younger was freed from his lifetime sentence on July 10, 1901. After his release, Cole wrote a popular memoir, lectured and toured with Frank James as part of a Wild West show, and eventually declared that he had become a Christian and repented for his criminal past.
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