OUTLAW BILL MINER “OLD BILL”

Who used the first recorded command of "Hands up!" in a Western holdup? The man who is supposed to have invented the usage is little known and most bibliographies fail to list him. His name was Bill Miner, "Old Bill," and he held up stagecoaches and trains from Civil War days to as late as 1911, when Pinkerton operative W. H. Minster captured him in a Georgia forest.

Shortly before his death, he dictated this memoir of his life and adventures.

Miner was born in Jackson, Kentucky, in 1847, of a schoolteacher mother and a mining footloose father who deserted his family before the boy was ten. Bill inherited his father's restlessness. When he was just past thirteen, he ran away to California "to become a cowboy." He drifted from ranch to ranch working as a cowpuncher and a bullwhacker. In his late years he liked to brag of his skill with a mule team when he was a youngster working in the tough California mining towns.

In 1863 he was in San Diego when the Apaches were on the warpath. General Wright, commanding the Division of the Pacific, announced he would pay $100 to any man who would ride through the Apache-infested country to deliver a message to a Colonel Corner, who was stationed in a fort on the Gile River.

Miner, then as thin and slender as a jockey, volunteered and was given a "fast horse and General Wright's “God Speed”. He rode all night, stopping off at the Tehone Ranch near Salt Lake to rest and feed his horse. Then he took off, swimming his horse across the Colorado River, to reach the colonel without incident. Within the hour he was back in the saddle, and the following morning rode up to General Wrignt's headquarters to receive $100 in gold and the general's thanks.

When Miner had set out, several residents of San Diego gave him letters to be delivered to the fort and when Miner reported back that they had been delivered, some gave him $5 and $10 pieces for his trouble. This gave Miner an idea, and with General Wright's blessing, he began a one-man mail service from San Diego to the Gile River fort and other points, charging $5, $10, and $25. But as fast as he earned the money, Miner spent it, and before long he was forced to turn over his horses and equipment to creditors.

By this time he had acquired a taste for high living and the precarious life of a road agent appealed to him. In 1869 he robbed his first stagecoach near Sonora California, getting away with a few hundred dollars, but a posse captured him when his horse dropped in its tracks. He was convicted of highway robbery and sentenced to fifteen years in San Quentin. Released in 1879, for good behavior, he went to Colorado, where he met Bill Leroy, one of the most daring of the Rocky Mountain highwaymen. Together they carried out several train and stagecoach robberies, but then vigilantes set out after them, later capturing and hanging Leroy. Miner however, escaped after shooting three of the possemen. With the proceeds of the robberies, Miner traveled to San Francisco, where he embarked on a ship for London.

For several months he toured Europe. Though he denied holding up any trains, American Style, he recalled that he thought about it more than once. In Turkey, after several adventures with desert bandits, Miner left Turkey and continued his travels to Africa. In Capetown, he got the idea of holding up a diamond train, but his better sense did prevail him "when I saw they (the guards) would be too much for me."

Reluctantly he left the diamond fields and sailed for South America, settling for a time in Rio de Janeiro, where he engaged in gun running. A South American tour followed, but Miner yearned for the West and in about 1880 he returned to the United States.

It wasn't long before he was back in business as a road agent. On November 8, 1881, he held up the Sonora California, stage, getting $3,000. “Hands up and not a hair on your head will be harmed” Bill declared. When the posses grew hot on his trail, he fled to Colorado, and in November 1881, held up the Del Norte stage, stealing several thousand dollars in gold dust.

He next appeared in Chicago, where, as a Pinkerton Agency report revealed, "he purchased an outfit of fashionable clothing, and in a few days went to Onondaga, Michigan, under the name of W. A. Morgan, a wealthy man from California.” After losing most of his money across the Faro table, Miner returned to the outlaw trail, this time in the company of a young gunfighter named Stanton T. Jones of Chillicothe, Ohio, "who was the same type as myself."

In March 1882, they again stopped the Del Norte stage, but the loot this time was only a few hundred dollars. A posse took up the chase and for four days it was a run-and-fight battle through the canyons and gullies. Miner and Jones were excellent shots and the possemen turned back after three men had been shot out of their saddles.

On November 7, 1882, Miner and three other outlaws held up the Sonora Stage again. Possemen surrounded the area and despite Miner's fast shooting, the gang was captured. Miner was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in San Quentin Prison.

On June 17, 1901, he was released for good behavior.

But on September 23, 1903, he single-handedly held up a train near Corbett, Oregon. A year later almost to the day, Bill held up the Canadian Pacific Railway Train, near Mission Junction, in British Columbia with Shorty Dunn, securing $10,000 worth of Gold and Bonds.

Historically there were just two train robberies attempted in Canada, both by Bill Miner and his gang. For the Mission robbery, rewards totaling $15,500 were offered for Bill, "dead or alive," by the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Canadian government, and the Province of British Columbia.

In Kamloops, with his friend Jack Budd, he laid low for the next three years as he played his favorite role of "a wealthy man from California," returning to outlawry on May 8, 1906. Bill held up the CPR Transcontinental Express in the fashion of the James Brothers, at the water tower at Ducks Landing, British Columbia. With Bill were Shorty Dunn and Louis Calquhoun, getting away on foot with a bottle of Liver Pills and just fifteen dollars. The Northwest Mounted Police set out to get him, and true to their tradition they brought Old Bill back two months later. On June 1, 1906, he was sentenced to life, and the Canadian Pacific gave a sigh of relief. During the trial, Bill kept an egg in his pocket for good luck, and took it out and peered at it thoughtfully during the proceedings. "No jail can hold me, sir," Old Bill told the sentencing judge in the Kamloops court.

On the morning of August 9, 1907, he made good his boast by crawling through a thirty-five-foot tunnel under the fence surrounding the brickyard in the New Westminster Penitentiary. Bill is remembered as one of Canada most notable bandit, a peaceful soul beloved by his friends and jailers alike.

Bill had had enough of Canada and returned to the states. In July, 1909, he held up the Portland Oregon Bank, getting $12,000, and years later, on February 18,1911, led a five-man gang in a daring hold-up of the Southern Railroad Express, near White Sulphur, Georgia, to get $3,500.

Bill was now a stoop-shouldered old gentleman with snow-white hair, a large mustache, and a friendly smile. Despite his age, he was still an expert horseman and had retained his shooting eye.

But progress had caught up with Old Bill. News of the robbery clicked out over the telegraph wires to the Pinkerton office and to the local marshals. A posse was organized and Pinkerton operative W. H. Minster, using a map, ringed several swampy areas with his possemen, gradually closing in. Miner and his men were nodding over a small fire when the possemen crawled through the brush. "Rouse boys, the law is on us," he shouted to his men as he suddenly jerked awake, alerted by a sense of alarm sharpened by years of practice in eluding the chase. His men scrambled to their feet. Miner began firing from a kneeling position. The forest echoed with gunfire. Two of Miner's men went down under the fusillade, but Miner kept working his rifle. At last he realized the game was up and throwing down his rifle, he surrendered.

"Well, I guess you got me, boys," was his comment as Minster snapped on the handcuffs. 
"What's your name?" asked the Pinkerton man.
"William Morgan," was the prompt reply.
Minster studied the weather-beaten old face. "You look familiar to me," he said. After questioning Miner, he sent the train robber's picture to the main office in Chicago with the notation that the name Morgan was obviously false. William Pinkerton, took one look at the picture, then sent a reply back to his operative in Georgia:

"Morgan is Bill Miner, California's train and stage robber. Alias William Morgan, George Anderson, Sam Anderson, California Billy. Old Bill, Bill Budd and G. W. Edwards.  Escaped from New Westminster Penitentiary, Victoria, British Columbia." When Minster showed him the wire, Miner grinned. "That's me," he said.

He was convicted of train robbery and sentenced to life in the Georgia State Penitentiary at Milledgeville. But three times in as many years the old-time outlaw proved that at least for him, iron bars did not a prison make. Each time he escaped he was recaptured only a few days later. The last time, after he had walked through swamps in waist-deep water, he confided to the guards who had hunted him down with dogs:

"I guess I'm getting too old for this sort of thing."

In 1911, Miner returned to prison to spend the last years of his life tending a flower garden and dictating his adventures to a friendly detective that got to like the old thief.

In 1913, at the age of sixty-six, Bill Miner died quietly in his sleep.