Cole and James Younger !

Cole Revealed a Personality that would have carried him to high success if rightly directed and Jim Exhibited Scholarly Capacity in Penitentiary Former Prison Surgeon Writes of his Experiences with the bandits from Missouri.

New sidelights on the characters of the Younger brothers, comrades and partners of Frank and Jesse James in post-bellum Missouri outlaw life, have come to light through the recollections of Dr. M. E. Withrow of International Falls, Minn. Dr. Withrow, former resident surgeon at Minnesota state penitentiary, knew Cole and James Younger while they were prisoners, befriended them, and received many confidences from them.

When Dr. Withrow became resident surgeon at the prison, Cole Younger was and for a considerable period had been a hospital steward. He worked for the Doctor continuously up to the time of his parole, which the physician helped him to obtain. The result was a friendship, which lasted until Cole Younger's death. "I think I had the closest acquaintance with him of any person in Minnesota," Dr. Withrow recently wrote The Star. "I thought a great deal of Cole, and the day after his release on parole I invited him to my mother's farm near Stillwater, Minn., to dinner. It was in the evening and as we drove out to the farm, we came upon a rise of land, which overlooks a valley. The sun was just setting and the scene was grand. Cole suddenly asked me to stop. When I complies he sat silent for a moment, then slowly said, "This is the first time I've seen the sun set in twenty-five years."

"The pathos of that remark and its effect on me I will never forget." Cole Younger, according to Dr. Withrow, was a friendly sort of a person." He had a strong personality and had fate placed him in different circumstances, the veteran doctor is sure he would have made a notable success in the world.

Student of History.
Jim Younger, on the other hand, was of a retiring disposition. He was averse to meeting people, particularly when their interest in him was mere curiosity. At the time Dr. Withrow knew the brothers they were celebrities in the nation and many sought the opportunity to see and talk to them.

"Jim, however, had the most astounding fund of knowledge that I ever knew in one person," said Dr. Withrow. "He was prison librarian and had access to a good sized library, in which he devoted his time to study. He slept very little-only about four hours out of the twenty-four-and was given the privilege of having a lamp in his quarters, by which he read continuously.

"Benjamin Franklin once said that a person could acquire knowledge if he had time, inclination and a capacity to study. Jim had all three. He also possessed a most retentive memory and could give the most intimate details of any and all historical events. He once gave me a most lucid description of the debates over the adoption of the constitution, and of every major piece of legislation that had been adopted since the beginning of the history of our country. I used to attempt to dig up some question to ask him, to see if it were not possible to puzzle him, but I never succeeded in finding one, no matter how abstruse, to which he did not have a ready, off-hand explanation."

At the time of the attempted bank robbery at Northfield, added Dr. Withrow, there was a medical student who lived in Northfield directly across the street from the bank. This student later became Dr. Henry Wheeler of Grand Forks, N. D. He shot one of the bandits during the street fight which followed the attempted robbery, and in later years Dr. Withrow had the opportunity of introducing him to Cole Younger.

Acted to spare Life.
"If I had not had a bad cartridge you would not have had all this trouble," said Dr. Wheeler. "I had a dead beat on you that day." "On the other hand," said Cole, "when my bullet broke the window over your head it was not a miss, but a misjudgment, I could have killed you easily, but I thought it would be better to scare you than to shoot you. Apparently you did not scare easily."

Cole frequently told Dr. Withrow that in his opinion dying persons and little children were the best judges of human nature. If such was the case, the imprisoned bandit had cause for satisfaction. "Any child always went to Cole readily." Writes the physician, "and every patient in the hospital to whom death was imminent always asked to have Cole remain with him in his last hours."

The real tragedy overtook the Younger brothers after they received their paroles. "They were thrust upon a world that had changed materially in twenty five years," says Dr. Withrow. "Neither had ever seen an electric street car, neither had ever talked over a telephone, and neither understood nor appreciated the changes until they were thrust bodily into them.

"Their reactions were very different. Cole was adaptable and very soon he got his stride. Jim, on the other hand, never could accustom himself to the thought that he was an object of curiosity. It pained him. Moreover, the work he obtained was not that for which he had been trained, and the knowledge that he received it because of a chapter in his life which he would have given anything to forget, only because his employer hoped to receive advertising through that means, was a bitter thought to him.

Distress led to suicide.
"Cole and Jim started out as salesmen for gravestones, but Jim soon went to work for a cigar store. Even there he felt that he was employed rather as an exhibit than as a salesman. He brooded over it. Only by sheer nerve he held on to it. I believe his worries over the fact that he was employed because of his notoriety as a former outlaw preyed on his mind and led to his suicide.

"Cole, however, rather enjoyed being pointed out and was never averse to meeting people whatever was their motive for the meeting. I do not believe he ever realized the strain under which Jim lived. Cole made many real friends among desirable people, who liked him for his real worth rather than for his notoriety." Dr. Withrow had many conversations with Cole about his life during the early outlaw years. The names of places near Lee Summit, Mo., Cole's boyhood home, still are familiar to him. Cole always said that the loss of his father, who was shot from ambush, and the death of an older brother were the causes of their misfortunes. As young men they were left without any restraining influences, and at an age when they were easily misled, when adventure was glamorous, they went into the war, and later into outlawry.

Cole told Dr. Withrow that his father opposed secession, although he was by principle states' rights man. He knew Abraham Lincoln personally, and Cole believed that had his father and brother lived, both of them would have been in the regular branch of the Confederate army.

"Shortly before his death, Cole wrote me," concluded Dr. Withrow. "With all his trouble he had always been an optimist. I think the incident that bothered him more than almost any other was the fact that when the Spanish-American war broke out, he could not enlist in the army. Cole lived in the past, and believed that he could be of service and campaign with the same vigor he had known when he was a young man riding with Quantrill. He had forgotten that years had taken toll from him as well as others of his generation."

Sources: Newspaper Clipping from Mom's Scrapbook
Kansas City Times, Monday October 24, 1938