[Western Outlaws] Younger Brothers Gang

Group of 3 autographed cabinent card photographs being bust portraits of Cole, Bob, and Jim Younger of the James-Younger Gang.  Albumen prints  (5 1/2 x 4 in; 140 x 100mm), on original printed card mounts, "Kuhn Stillwater, Minn."; studio stamp in lower margins n and Henrietta Young's 1889 copyright stamp on versos; minor fading, rubbing to mounts.

rare set of signed portraits of the younger brothers from stillwater prison. A  pencilled note on the versos records Cole Younger's presentation to a  Mrs. Phipps on 8 December, 1889. By this time the  brothers were well into their prison sentences for the disastrous attempted 1876 bank robbery of the First National in Northfield, Minnesota. While the James brothers escaped that skirmish, the Youngers did not, but were instead brought into custody badly injured and with the expectation of dying in prison. Their careers began as teenage "bushwhackers" recruited into the  rebel guerillas under Quantrill in the bloody edges of  the Civil War, continuing their  post war "financial terrorism" with the James brothers, raiding banks, trains and coaches. 

"We tried a desperate game and lost. But we are rough men used to rough ways, and we will abide by the consequences," Cole remarked upon capture, but all three brothers seemed to reform in prison. Their infamy as outlaws was such that their sister had the present set of portrait cards made to meet requests for images of her notorious brothers. James Younger in particular hated the attention and was reluctant to give his autograph and Bob Cole died in prison from TB in 1889, making the present card likely one of the last he signed. A complete set of the signers from prison is rare.