Northfield Bank Raid (September 7, 1876)

The gang entered Northfield, a small town with a short 20-year history at that point, in multiple groups. The first three riders, Frank James, Charlie Pitts, and Bob Younger, rode up Division Street, hitched their horses in front of the bank, and walked to the corner. They sat on some dry goods boxes and chatted with locals. Two other riders, Clell Miller and Cole Younger, came up from the south. That was a cue for the original group to go inside the bank. The remaining gang members kept watch over the escape route in Mill Square.

At just before 2 PM, the first group of riders entered the First National Bank of Northfield intent on robbery. Inside, they confronted the bank’s employees, bookkeeper Frank Wilcox, teller Alonzo Bunker, and “acting cashier” Joseph Lee Heywood. With weapons drawn, they demanded Heywood open the safe that held $15,000. When they assumed the inner door was locked, Heywood first claimed it was on a timer, then flatly refused to comply despite being hit with a pistol butt and having his neck cut with a knife.

Cole Younger and Miller were positioned outside the bank to keep anyone from entering during the raid. It was there that the gang’s plan was derailed by an unforeseeable circumstance. As Clell Miller dismounted to close the bank’s front door, local hardware merchant J.S. Allen, who’d made a deposit earlier in the day, approached. He witnessed the chaotic scene unfolding inside. Miller pointed his revolver at Allen and told him to stay quiet, but Allen broke away, shouting, “Get your guns, boys! They’re robbing the bank!”

Their intentions now known, the gang rode up and down the streets, firing their pistols to scare curious onlookers away. Allen’s cry had alerted nearby citizens, like Henry Wheeler and Anselm Manning, who grabbed whatever guns they could find and began shooting at the gang. Perched in an upper-level window across the street, Wheeler fatally shot Clell Miller. Meanwhile, on the street below, Anselm Manning fired repeatedly at Bill Chadwell with his Remington repeater rifle, inflicting fatal injuries. Townsperson Nicolaus Gustafson, who’d emigrated to the area from Sweden only months prior, was caught in the crossfire and mortally wounded. He died several days later.

Inside, Heywood persisted, remaining unwilling to open what the robbers believed was a locked safe. While the bolts remained in place so that it appeared locked, the bank’s safe was left open during business hours. They fired a shot over Heywood’s head to try to scare him, to no avail. Bunker ran for the rear door to escape but was shot in the shoulder. He continued to the doctor’s office and survived to provide an eyewitness account of the raid.

Outside the bank, the situation quickly escalated. Hearing the yelling and shooting, Bob Younger and Charlie Pitts grabbed the available cash on the counter and ran. Enraged by the failed robbery, Frank James paused long enough to turn to Heywood and fatally shoot him in the head.

The gang retreated, leaving fifteen thousand dollars in the bank and the bodies of two dead members, Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell, behind. They escaped town at 2:07 PM with $26.70 in spare change. A posse was formed, and for the next two weeks hundreds of volunteers combed southern Minnesota searching for the gang.

During the search, Jesse and Frank James escaped capture and returned to Missouri, leaving Charlie Pitts and the Younger Brothers behind and, for the rest of their lives, denying they’d ever been to Minnesota. On September 20, 1876, the four remaining gang members were surrounded by a posse at the Hanksa Slough, near Madelia, Minnesota. Charlie Pitts was killed in an ensuing shootout. The Younger Brothers were captured, pleaded guilty to the murder of Joseph Lee Heywood, and sentenced to serve life in Stillwater prison.