When the iron doors shut behind us at the Stillwater prison I submitted to
the prison discipline with the same unquestioning obedience that I had
exacted during my military service, and Jim and Bob, I think, did the
same.
For ten years and a half after our arrival, Warden Reed remained. The
first three years there was a popular idea that such desperate men as the
Youngers would not stay long behind prison walls, and that especial
watchfulness must be exercised in our case. Accordingly the three of us
were put at work making buckets and tubs, with Ben Cayou over us as a
special guard, when in our dreams we had been traveling to South America
on Ben Butler’s money.
Then we were put in the thresher factory. I made the sieves, while Jim
sewed the belts, and Bob made the straw-carriers and elevators.
The latter part of the Reed regime I was in the storeroom.
Jan. 25, 1884, when we had been in the prison something over seven years,
the main prison building was destroyed by fire at night. George P. Dodd,
who was then connected with the prison, while his wife was matron, and who
still lives in Buffalo, Minn., said of our behavior that night:
“I was obliged to take the female convicts from their cells and place them
in a small room that could not be locked. The Youngers were passing and
Cole asked if they could be of any service. I said: ‘Yes, Cole. Will you
three boys take care of Mrs. Dodd and the women?’ Cole answered: ‘Yes, we
will, and if you ever had any confidence in us place it in us now.’ I
told him I had the utmost confidence and I slipped a pistol to Cole as I
had two. Jim, I think, had an ax handle and Bob a little pinch bar. The
boys stood before the door of the little room for hours and even took the
blankets they had brought with them from their cells and gave them to the
women to try and keep them comfortable as it was very cold. When I could
take charge of the women and the boys were relieved, Cole returned my
revolver.”
Next morning Warden Reed was flooded with telegrams and newspaper
sensations: “Keep close watch of the Youngers;” “Did the Youngers escape?”
“Plot to free the Youngers,” and that sort of thing.
The warden came to his chief deputy, Abe Hall, and suggested that we be
put in irons, not that he had any fear on our account, but for the effect
on the public.
“I’ll not put irons on ’em,” replied Hall.
And that day Hall and Judge Butts took us in a sleigh down town to the
county jail where we remained three or four weeks. That was the only time
we were outside the prison enclosure from 1876 till 1901.
When H. G. Stordock became warden, I was made librarian, while Jim carried
the mail and Bob was clerk to the steward where we remained during the
administration of Wardens Randall and Garvin, except Bob, who wasted away
from consumption and died in September, 1889.
When Warden Wolfer came to the prison, he put Jim in charge of the mail
and the library, and I was set at work in the laundry temporarily while
the new hospital building was being made ready. I was then made head
nurse in the hospital, and remained there until the day we were paroled,
Warden Reeve, who was there for two years under the administration of Gov.
Lind, leaving us there.
Every one of these wardens was our friend, and the deputy wardens, too.
Abe Hall, Will Reed, A. D. Westby, Sam A. Langum, T. W. Alexander, and
Jack Glennon were all partisans of ours. If any reader misses one name
from this list of deputy wardens, there is nothing I have to say for or
against him.
Dr. Pratt, who was prison physician when we went to Stillwater, Dr. T. C.
Clark, who was his assistant, and Dr. B. J. Merrill, who has been prison
physician since, have been staunch partisans of the Younger boys in the
efforts of our friends to secure our pardon. And the young doctors with
whom I was thrown in close contact during their service as assistant
prison physicians, Drs. Sidney Boleyn, Gustavus A. Newman, Dan Beebe, A.
E. Hedbeck, Morrill Withrow, and Jenner Chance, have been most earnest in
their championship of our cause.
The stewards, too, Benner, and during the Reeve regime, Smithton, which
whom as head nurse I was thrown in direct contact, never had any
difficulty with me, although Benner with a twinkle in his eye, would say
to me:
“Cole, I believe you come and get peaches for your patients up there long
after they are dead.”
The invalids in that hospital always got the delicacies they wanted,
subject to the physician’s permission, if what they wanted was to be found
anywhere in Stillwater or in St. Paul. The prison hospital building is
not suitable for such use, and a new hospital building is needed, but no
fault can be found with the way invalid prisoners are cared for at
Stillwater.
When there is added a new hospital building, and the present hospital is
transformed into an insane ward, Stillwater will indeed be a model prison.
Words fail me when I seek to express my gratitude to the host of friends
who were glad to plead our cause during the later years of our confinement
at Stillwater, and especially to Warden Henry Wolfer and his family, every
one of whom was a true friend to Jim and myself.