Friday, February 17, 2006
Matt Warner letter found.
RENO, Nev. - At first, Richard Johnston thought nothing of an online auction house's offer to sell a letter written in 1900 by a member of Butch Cassidy's infamous Wild Bunch for $5,999.
It was only later that the Old West history buff from Reno made a surprising discovery: The two-page letter from outlaw Willard E. Christiansen to Utah Gov. Heber Wells was stolen from the Utah State Archives.
"I checked my files and discovered that I had seen the letter there in 1976," Johnston recalled. "As a historian, it makes you angry that these types of thefts are occurring." - Yahoo
Coincidently enough, I've been working on a site for a couple months now about the Wild Bunch.
I'm glad they recovered the letter, from experience I can tell you how rare it is to find first hand documentation like that when it comes to outlaw history. With limited exceptions (Willard E. Christiansen aka Matt Warner being one of them), these guys didn't write books. The letters they wrote to family and friends usually contained instructions to destroy them after the receiver was done. It's nice to see this letter has found its way back home.
|
