Running down the list of "outlaws" in the "Bubbly Springs Asylum Gang", it's time to turn our attention to "Jim Dalton"......I'm not even setting this one up as one of the "As Seen On TV" showcases, because from what I can tell there wasn't even a Jim Dalton in real life. At least not as a member of the Dalton Gang family.
Here's some background from Wikipedia:
The Dalton Gang was an outlaw group in the American Old West during 1890-1892. They specialized in bank and train robberies. They were related to the Younger brothers, who rode with Jesse James, though they acted later and independently of the James-Younger Gang. The three Dalton brothers involved in the gang were Gratton "Great" Dalton (b. 1861), Bob Dalton (b. 1869), and Emmett Dalton (b. 1871). One fourth brother, William M. "Bill" Dalton (1866–1894), also had a career as an outlaw, but operated as a member of the Wild Bunch.
The Dalton family came from Jackson County, Missouri. Lewis Dalton was a saloon keeper in Kansas City, Kansas, when he married Adeline Younger, the aunt of Cole and Jim Younger. By 1882, the family lived in northeast Oklahoma, then known as the Indian Territory, and by 1886 they had moved to Coffeyville in southeast Kansas. Thirteen of the couple's 15 children survived to maturity.
So it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that one of those other 11 children was named James or had the diminutive nickname of Jim. (There was an older brother named Frank who became a lawman.) But there doesn't seem to be any record of a Jim Dalton.For alls I know, as Stuart Best would say, this guy's name really was Jim Dalton and he just succumbed to the fantasy that he was related to the Dalton Gang.
BCnU!
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