|
Dalton/Johnson Outlaw Gang
from 1889 to 1997
The Dalton/Johnson outlaw gang included more than a single group of the five individuals whom the citizens of Coffeyville exposed on the morning of October 5, 1892, in Kansas. In fact, there is evidence to support and to prove there was a sixth member in the raiding party and that member was female.
The history of the Dalton's began before 1892 and lives on today in the Dewey and Bartlesville area of Oklahoma and in the Houston area of Texas. Family members retain land and political powers within those regions of the country.
There are a multitude of unanswered questions remaining concerning the Daltons and their final actions in 1892. Also, a myriad of contradictions lingers, concerning the Coffeyville aftermath
and the years which followed. We now know that Minnie Johnson existed and was in truth a first cousin to Lucy and Julia Johnson. However, she was never considered to be either of the Johnson
women, who played a significant role in the gang's activities. Minnie Johnson appears briefly in the Kentucky history of the Dalton/Johnson clans and is then never recalled, except by Emmett in his writing years later, which for the most part was extremely fabricated. Documentation notes a Lucy Johnson married shortly after the Coffeyville, Kansas debacle and then moved out of the area. A daughter was born to Lucy in the late 1880's and her father was, Robert »Bob« Renick Dalton.
Years later Emmett Dalton would adopt her and regard her as his own, and her illegitimate son. Marriage records prove Julia Johnson was married five times. Four of her husbands were killed in one fashion of another, while she was nearby.
To this day, the Dalton name and family heritage lives on and thrives on the mystery started more than a hundred years ago with the deaths of Westley and Martha Johnson. The killings, attributed to the Dalton gang, did not begin at Coffeyville nor did they end with Emmett's death in 1937.
|
