Jennie Stevens, or Little Britches | |
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Born | 1879 |
Occupation | American outlaw |
Spouses | Benjamin Midkiff (divorced)Robert Stephens (divorced)
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Parent(s) | Daniel and Lucy Stevenson |
Little Britches (born Jennie Stevenson 1879) is an outlaw in the American Old West associated with Cattle Annie. Their exploits are fictionalized in the 1981 film Cattle Annie and Little Britches, directed by Lamont Johnson and starring Diane Lane as Little Britches.
Born Jennie Stevens in Barton County in southwestern Missouri, to a farm couple, Daniel and Lucy Stevenson, [1] her one known sister was Victoria Estella Stevenson. Apparently she dropped the "son" from her maiden name; her second husband was apparently named "Stephens", not "Stevens." For a time, therefore, she was Jennie Stevenson Stephens. The Stevenson family lived during part of the 1880s in Seneca in Newton County, also in southwestern Missouri on the eastern border of Oklahoma, then Indian Territory. The Stevensons then moved into the Creek Nation at Sinnett in Pawnee County in the northern Indian Territory. Little Britches followed stories of the Bill Doolin gang written by such dime novelists as Ned Buntline, like her friend Cattle Annie (born Anna Emmaline McDoulet). [1]
Little Britches joined the Doolin gang but lost her horse and returned home to the stern rebuke of her father. She was determined nevertheless to pursue a life of crime, and she married a deaf-mute horse dealer, Benjamin Midkiff, in March 1895. They established housekeeping in a hotel in Perry in Noble County in northern Oklahoma. Midkiff found her unfaithful, however, and he returned the teenager to her father after the two had been together for only six weeks. Within a day of returning home, she began riding along the Arkansas River in search of outlaw adventure. [1]
Soon she apparently married Robert Stephens, but the union lasted only six months. At a community dance Jennie and Annie met the Doolin gang, later called the Wild Bunch (not the Butch Cassidy gang of the same name). These outlaws, all eleven of whom met violent deaths, maintained a hideaway in the Creek Nation Cave, located on the Cimarron River in Payne County near Ingalls east of Stillwater, Oklahoma. At a shootout in Ingalls in 1893, three marshals were killed. [1]
Little Britches and Cattle Annie were excellent horse riders and sharpshooters who dressed in men's clothing. The two women evaded law enforcement and became known for their daring pursuits throughout the region. The pair sold whisky to the Osage and Pawnee tribes and engaged in horse theft, operating either together or alone. They alerted other outlaws about the location of law enforcement officers. [1]
In mid-August 1895, Little Britches was captured, but she soon escaped from a restaurant in Pawnee, Oklahoma Territory, while she was in the custody of Sheriff Frank Lake. Journalist accounts maintain that she left through the back door of the establishment despite the presence of a guard. She tore off her dress, grabbed the horse of a deputy marshal, and galloped away into the night. U.S. Marshals Bill Tilghman and his deputy Steve Burke quickly tracked down Annie and Little Britches. Burke caught Cattle Annie as she was climbing from a window, but Tilghman had more difficulty apprehending Little Britches, who fired a Winchester rifle at both lawmen. Tilghman then shot Little Britches' horse. As the animal fell to the ground, Little Britches was taken into custody and jailed, but only after she had tried to shoot Tilghman with a pistol and then to attack him physically. [1] [2]
The Oklahoma Journal of History and Culture contends that Tilghman likely had nothing to do with the apprehension of Little Britches. Newspapers credited both captures to Lake, Burke, and Frank Canton, another deputy marshal. The publication further contends that neither girl had been involved with the Doolins or any other outlaw gang. [3]
The two young women were tried for horse theft and the sale of alcohol to the Indians before U.S. District Judge Andrew Gregg Curtin Bierer, Sr. (1862-1951) [4] at his court in Guthrie in Logan County, capital of the Oklahoma Territory. [1] Little Britches was incarcerated for two months in the Guthrie jail (under the name Jennie Midkiff, from her first husband of six weeks) as a material witness in a murder trial. She had witnessed a shooting while working as a domestic. Little Britches' two-year prison sentence for horse theft and selling whisky to the Indians began in 1895 at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham. She was released in October 1896, under terms of good behavior, and returned to her parents. Her final years are unknown, though some stories circulated that she married for a third time, reared a family, and led an exemplary life thereafter in Tulsa, Oklahoma. [1]
Cattle Annie received a one-year sentence and was also sent to Framingham in 1895. Because of poor health, she was paroled, but remained in Framingham for some time. [1]
In the film Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), directed by Lamont Johnson, Diane Lane portrays Little Britches, Amanda Plummer makes her film debut as Cattle Annie, Burt Lancaster is an historically inaccurate and much older Bill Doolin, Rod Steiger is Marshal Tilghman, Scott Glenn is Bill Dalton, and Buck Taylor (known as the young gunsmith-turned-part-time-deputy and apprentice medical doctor on CBS's Gunsmoke ) plays Dynamite Dick, a fictionalized character conflating elements of several real people. Bill Doolin was shot to death at the age of 38 by Marshal Heck Thomas; Lancaster was 67 when he played Doolin in the film. [5]
Novelist Robert Ward, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, wrote Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1977), his personal interpretation of the romantic legends of the Doolin-Dalton gang. [6]
Actress Gloria Winters (of the Sky King aviation adventure television series) portrayed Little Britches in a 1954 episode of the syndicated Stories of the Century, a western anthology series starring and narrated by Jim Davis. In this story, Little Britches became smitten with an outlaw named Dave Ridley, played by James Best, rather than Bill Doolin. Little Britches is shown at the conclusion of the episode leaving the Framingham reformatory and anonymously working in a soup kitchen in a slum section of New York City. [7] In the 1962 episode "Girl with a Gun", on the anthology series, Death Valley Days , Anne Helm filled the title role of Jennie Metcalf, with Ken Mayer as Marshal Hobe Martin. [8]
"Little Britches" is used across the United States as the proper name of numerous business, including day-care centers, pediatric clinics, clothing stores, bakeries, boutiques, and even an employment agency for nannies.[ citation needed ] Nor should Little Britches the outlaw be confused with:
Pawnee is a city and county seat of Pawnee County, Oklahoma, United States. The town is northeast of Stillwater at the junction of U.S. Route 64 and State Highway 18.
The Wild Bunch, also known as the Doolin–Dalton Gang, or the Oklahombres, were a gang of American outlaws based in the Indian Territory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were active in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma Territory during the 1890s—robbing banks and stores, holding up trains, and killing lawmen. They were also known as The Oklahoma Long Riders because of the long dusters that they wore.
William Doolin was an American bandit outlaw and founder of the Wild Bunch, sometimes known as the Doolin-Dalton Gang. Like the earlier Dalton Gang alone, it specialized in robbing banks, trains, and stagecoaches in Arkansas, Kansas, Indiana, and Oklahoma during the 1890s.
Dan Clifton (1865–1896?), known as Dynamite Dan or Dynamite Dick, was an American Old West outlaw and member of the Doolin Gang.
William Matthew Tilghman Jr. was a career lawman, gunfighter, and politician in Kansas and Oklahoma during the late 19th century. Tilghman was a Dodge City city marshal in the early 1880s and played a role in the Kansas County Seat Wars. In 1889 he moved to Oklahoma where he acquired several properties during a series of land rushes. While serving as a Deputy U.S. Marshal in Oklahoma, he gained recognition for capturing the notorious outlaw Bill Doolin and helping to track and kill the other members of Doolin's gang, which made him famous as one of Oklahoma's "Three Guardsmen".
Chris Madsen was a lawman of the Old West who is best known as being one of The Three Guardsmen, the name given to Madsen and two other Deputy US Marshals who were responsible for the apprehension and/or killing of several outlaws of that era. The Three Guardsmen consisted of Madsen, Bill Tilghman, and Heck Thomas.
The Three Guardsmen is the name popularized in Old West literature describing three lawmen who became legendary in their pursuit of many outlaws of the late 19th century. Deputy U.S. Marshals Bill Tilghman (1854–1924), Chris Madsen (1851–1944), and Heck Thomas (1850–1912) were "The Three Guardsmen", working under U.S. Marshal Evett "E.D." Nix.
Henry Andrew "Heck" Thomas was a lawman on the American frontier, most notably in Indian Territory. He was known for helping bring law and order to the region. In 1889 as a deputy in Fort Smith, Arkansas, he tried to capture Ned Christie (Cherokee), wanted as a suspect in the killing of a US marshal.
George "Bitter Creek" Newcomb was an American outlaw of the American Old West. He was first a member of the Dalton Gang, but after being called "too wild" by Bob Dalton, he and Bill Doolin started the Wild Bunch gang.
Rose Elizabeth Dunn also known as Rose of Cimarron and later Rose of the Cimarron, was best known for her good looks and for her romantic involvement with outlaw George "Bittercreek" Newcomb when she was a teenager during the closing years of the Old West.
Richard "Little Dick" West was an American outlaw of the Old West, and a member of Bill Doolin's gang.
Mason Frakes Dalton, also known as William Marion "Bill" Dalton, was an outlaw in the American Old West. He was the co-leader of the Wild Bunch gang and with his brothers Gratton, Bob and Emmett Dalton was a member of the Dalton Gang.
Bill Raidler, known as "Little Bill" Raidler was an American outlaw of the Old West, and member of the Doolin-Dalton gang.
The Battle of Ingalls was a gunfight on September 1, 1893 between United States Marshals and the Doolin-Dalton Gang, during the closing years of the Old West era, in Ingalls, Oklahoma. The Doolin-Dalton Gang had been involved in a number of train robberies and bank robberies, beginning around 1891. They had found a safe haven in the town of Ingalls, which unwittingly harbored many outlaws during that period. On September 1, 1893, a posse was organized by the new United States Marshal, Evett Dumas "E.D." Nix, which entered the outlaw town of Ingalls with the intent to capture the gang. The lawmen were engaged in a gunbattle in which three of the fourteen lawmen carrying Deputy Marshals' commissions would die as a result of the battle.
Charley Pierce was an American outlaw in the American Old West who rode with both the Dalton Gang and the Doolin Dalton Gang during the 1890s. He and "Bittercreek" Newcomb were killed by friends, the Dunn brothers, for bounty money.
The Dunn Brothers were a group of brothers from Pawnee, Oklahoma, who worked as Old West bounty hunters. They are best known for having killed George "Bittercreek" Newcomb and Charley Pierce, members of the Wild Bunch.
Evett Dumas Nix, often known as E.D. Nix, was a United States Marshal in the late 19th century handling the jurisdiction that included the wild Oklahoma Territory, later to be the state of Oklahoma. He was first appointed in 1893, in the closing years of the Old West, during the last years of the "Hanging Judge" Parker tenure.
Cattle Annie and Little Britches is a 1981 American Western film starring Burt Lancaster, John Savage, Rod Steiger, Diane Lane, and Amanda Plummer, based on the lives of two adolescent girls in late 19th-century Oklahoma Territory, who became infatuated with the Western outlaws they had read about in Ned Buntline's stories, and left their homes to join the criminals. It was scripted by David Eyre and Robert Ward from Ward's book, and directed by Lamont Johnson.
Anna Emmaline McDoulet, known as Cattle Annie, was a young American outlaw in the American Old West, most associated with Jennie Stevens, or Little Britches. Their exploits are known in part through the fictional film Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), directed by Lamont Johnson and starring Amanda Plummer in her film debut as Cattle Annie, with Diane Lane as Little Britches.
The Doolins of Oklahoma is a 1949 American Western film directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Randolph Scott, George Macready and Louise Allbritton. It was distributed by Columbia Pictures.
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