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ALS, one page both sides, 7.5 x 11.25, no date. Handwritten letter to his old friend, Cora McNeill, under her married name, "Mrs. Deming," in part: "Cole has ask me to say to you that he does not know the address of Mrs. Lull…Now before answering your questions of Books and Master Fritz I will first state that I am not a reader of fiction and that it would be impossible for me to tell you in a letter all that Fritz can do…Master Fritz will be 14 years old the next 10 day of April. He has at all times been free to go and come at his own sweet will, his open cage hanging over the mail table at which I work. He understands most all that is said to him and how to make his wants known. At one time before he came so near dying. I had him to drill every day, march up and down the mail table with a small stick under his wing…he would also turn summer saults, play that he was dead when told to do so, as well as dance, that is jump a round all over the table and chuckle as if laughing…He could do a great deal of mischief also, one of his tricks was to hide over the stair door waiting for visitors to pass through, and then jump down on some poor girl's head who was shure to jump and scream and all others to laugh at her, as well as Fritz would be back on his pearch to join in the merriment. I was offered $250 in gold for him by a wealthy lady who he had frightened as described above." In fine condition.
Cole and Jim Younger began their life of crime during the Civil War as members of the notorious Quantrill's Raiders. The brothers avoided arrest longer than many other outlaws due to the sympathy and support of many of their fellow Confederate veterans. However, in 1876, the Younger luck ran dry when their attempted bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, went famously awry. Armed townsfolk disrupted the robbery, chased off the gang, and in the ensuing melee, two townspeople were killed. When the Youngers were finally captured, they were tried and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater—a guilty plea saved them from the hangman's noose. After two years of legislative wrangling, a parole bill was passed in Minnesota's legislature and Cole and Jim Younger were freed on July 10, 1901. After his release, Jim became engaged to Alix Mueller, but due to the terms of his parole, Jim was not legally allowed to marry. In 1900 he was listed as a farmer in the census and killed himself on October 19, 1902, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Cora McNeill was born in St. Clair, Missouri, in 1862. She was an admirer of Cole and Jim Younger, and it is believed that she was a sweetheart of Jim's before he went to prison. She continued her correspondence to both Jim and Cole while they were incarcerated in Minnesota following the botched Northfield bank robbery. She was married to Minneapolis judge George M. Bennett, who attempted to secure a pardon for the Younger brothers.
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