. . . Summer 2002
'Get Your Guns Boys, They're Robbing the Bank!' (Part 2 of 2) Wheeler
heads the posse According to a story published in the Michigan Alumnus, "The bodies were kept in barrels, under water, until the reopening of school in Michigan. The barrels were labeled 'fresh paint' before being shipped to Ann Arbor." Later that fall, the family of Clell Miller showed up in Ann Arbor and demanded the body of their relative. Wheeler complied, but kept the other body for research and dissection. Most people are familiar with the rest of the story of the James and Younger brothers. Once clear of the posse, Jesse and Frank decided to split from the Youngers, whose wounds prevented further mounted travel. Pinkerton detectives surrounded the Youngers two weeks later in a swamp near Madelia, Minnesota. They surrendered, and each received a 25-year prison sentence. Meanwhile, the Jameses slowly made their way to Nashville, lay low for three years, then resumed their criminal careers with a new gang. But one recruit was young outlaw-wannabe Bob Ford, who shot 34-year-old Jesse dead in 1882 for a $10,000 bounty. Ford will forever be remembered as "the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard" (Jesse's alias) in St. Joseph, Missouri. Soon after, Frank James turned himself in, but no jury would convict him. He was acquitted of all crimes and lived until 1915, comforted by his passion for Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats, Byron, Hawthorne, Tennyson and the Bible. A surgeon, mayor and inventor Henry Wheeler completed his studies at Michigan during the year after the Northfield raid, and in 1877 headed to Columbia University for further training. Then he returned to Northfield to marry his high school sweetheart, Adeline Murray, in 1878. She and her infant died in childbirth in 1880. In mid 1881, Wheeler moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, and became a prominent surgeon and tourist attraction there. At the age of 64, he was elected mayor for 1918-20. In his recent history Faithful Unto Death (2001), historian John Koblas quotes the following article from a Grand Forks newspaper reporter as evidence of Wheeler's lasting fame for his renowned gunplay: Doctor Wheeler is in danger of losing his reputation as a marksman and received many condolences yesterday over his poor aim. It was like this: A partridge looked down upon the doctor from the top of a telephone pole at the Union National Bank corner. The doctor gazed at the stray visitor and brought forth a howitzer from the depths of his hip pocket and blazed away. The bird looked at him with a surprised expression and the doctor fired another volley. The bird again looked surprised and took wing and sailed away. Wheeler was 30 when he married his second wife, Josephine E. Connell of St. Cloud, Minnesota. She died in 1914 in the 30th year of their marriage. Eight years later, when he was 68, he married Ontario-born Mae M. McCulloch. They had a son in 1925, when the elder Wheeler was almost 72. Wheeler was one of the most popular citizens of Grand Forks, and for more than his Northfield adventure. "He won the first organized car races there with his steam-powered 'locomobile," Koblas writes. And Wheeler's son, who died recently, said that despite his father's failure to hit the partridge with his handgun, he remained a sharpshooter with a rifle. "Mom said he would fill the backseat of a Cadillac before breakfast" with game, the junior Wheeler told Koblas. Dr. Wheeler was also an inventor, Koblas says. He introduced a device for reharnessing horses in seconds rather than minutes and built a snow yacht for skimming the snowy plains, a vehicle that made the cover of Scientific American. Wheeler died in 1930 at the age of 76, and his body was returned to Northfield for burial. A traveler told Wheeler's hometown newspaper, the Northfield News, that he recalled passing through Grand Forks and seeing Wheeler's medical offices there. The traveler, A.D. Southworth, said Wheeler displayed a "bandit's skeleton" in his office "for educational purposes," and pointed out to visitors where the bullet had lodged in the dead man's spine. It is possible that it was the bandit Stiles's skeleton, but it wasn't the skeleton of the robber that Wheeler slew, since Clell Miller's corpse was returned to his parents before medical students could dissect it. In any event, Wheeler told Southworth that when he returned to Ann Arbor to resume his studies, he had asked a U-M freshman to assist him in moving the cadaver into a lab. The curious youth asked where the body had come from, and Wheeler replied, "I shot him on the street when I was home in Northfield." Whereupon, according to Wheeler's yarn, the young man withdrew from the University. The Northfield News on another occasion asked Wheeler if he ever regretted killing a member of the James-Younger gang. "Poppycock!" Wheeler told the reporter. "The man got what he deserved! By serving
as my cadaver, he served a much higher purpose than he would have had
he lived." Freelance writer Bert Schiller '69 of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, is an environmental consultant and a history buff.
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ver
the weekend after Labor Day, the town of Northfield's 
Defeat
of Jesse James Days Committee