This Is Where Cole Younger Dies

The incredible true story of how the leader of the Younger Boys cheated death and taught a nation patriotism.

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When the Younger brothers were captured at Hanska Slough on September 21, 1876, after the failed bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, a reporter from St.Paul’s Pioneer Press visited the Youngers in Madelia as they recovered from their wounds. Bob Younger told him, “I had tried a desperate game and lost. We are rough boys, used to rough work, and we must abide by the consequences.”

The reporter had first stopped in to see Cole and James, who the doctor would not allow to talk much. Cole managed to say only that he thanked the citizens of Madelia for treating them with kindness.

Cole, the eldest of the Younger brothers, would be portrayed by a newspaperman who knew Frank James, Robertus Love, as a man whose bravado proved bulletproof: “Thomas Coleman Younger, who looked like a bishop and fought like a Bengal tiger, lay upon the ground soaked with rainfall and with his own blood—and smiled as he saw approaching him Colonel Vought of the Flanders House at Madelia, hot rifle in hand.”

The Younger brothers had stayed there prior to the Northfield Raid.

“How are you, landlord?” Cole asked. Cole could see only out of his left eye. He had been struck by a rifle ball under his right eye, which destroyed the optic nerve.

The “devotion of the brothers” was cited as the reason why the Youngers had not escaped. “[Jim Younger’s] mouth was so badly shattered and the hemorrhage was so profuse that it left a trail of blood that was easily followed. At last he became so weak that it was necessary for Cole and Bob to ride beside him to support him. By this they were delayed several days and in the meantime the country was swarming with their pursuers.