“Black Bart,” aka Charles E. Boles (1829 – ? Last seen February 28, 1888), committed his final stagecoach robbery on this date, November 3, 1883, when he held up the stage from Sonora to Milton in Calaveras County.

As to what happened with Black Bart, it’s known that Boles never returned to his wife after his release from prison, although he did write letters to her. In one of them he wrote that he was tired of being shadowed by Wells Fargo, felt demoralized, and wanted to get away from everybody.

The last known sighting of Boles was on February 28, 1888. Hume said Wells Fargo tracked him to the Visalia House hotel in Visalia. The owner said a man answering the description of Boles had checked in to the hotel and then was never seen again.

Later Victoria Tudor, the Marysville Cemetery Commissioner said Boles had lived in Marysville, California in later life, working as a pharmacist. Where he was rumored to have been buried in an unmarked grave in the Knights Landing Cemetery in Knights Landing, California.

Johnny Thacker, a Wells Fargo detective who had participated in Boles’s arrest, said in 1897 that he believed Boles had gone to live in Japan.