While researching Hannah Wolfe who is my second great-grandmother’s half-sister, I discovered a newspaper article on her second husband, C.C. Dalton, posted on many family trees and it claims that he is a member of the Dalton Gang. Apparently, he was arrested in 1895 for the murder of Wiley Lakins alias Wiley Hipshire. This murder took place on July 10, 1880 in Grainger County, Tennessee.
This article was published in many newspapers across the USA
By 1880, Hannah was living in the home of McHenry Bray, her half-brother, along with her daughter, Sarah, and son, Colby. It is interesting that her marital status was “divorced” and she took back the Wolfe name and also changed the surname of Sarah and Colby to Wolfe. This intrigued me so I began looking for C.C. Dalton and couldn’t find him in 1880 so the information on other trees pointed me in the right direction. The problem that I saw on the other trees was Hannah was listed as a “Mallicoat” so I wanted to research this couple a bit more to see if I had gotten off track.
Perhaps the confusion with Hannah began with her marriage to her first husband, Claiborne Wolfe, as they shared the same surname. Since there were many Wolfe lines in the area, I suspect that they were distant cousins. Hannah and Claiborne had six small children when he died in 1865: Simeon, John James, Jesse, David Houston, S. Henry, and Claiborne Fielden. In 1866 she married C.C. Dalton whose initials stand for Christopher Colby Dalton who was also known as “Christie.” He was 17 years younger than Hannah when I reviewed their 1870 census in Grainger County, Tennessee. She gave birth to four more children during this marriage: Hamilton P., William Jasper, Sarah Jane, and Colby.
Where is C.C. Dalton in 1880? Hiding from the law or dead was my thought but other trees noted that he was in an Iowa prison in 1885. That appears to be correct as he was listed on the Iowa Consecutive Registers of Convicts: Christopher Dalton from Guthrie County, Iowa who was incarcerated for the crime of assault to murder for a term of five years that began on March 24, 1885. The record lists his nativity as Tennessee and he was discharged on June 11, 1889.
Was C.C. Dalton really connected to the infamous Dalton Gang? I don’t think so as I recently discovered a series of newspaper articles that appeared in The Guthrian Newspaper in Iowa that were published 1885:
After seeing that his sanity was under question, I scoured the articles and found out he was also known as “Marmaduke” in the longer article. What a name! This article also mentioned a sister named Mrs. Kimball. I reviewed his siblings and discovered that he did have an older sister named Louisa who had married a Kemble and lived in Cass, Guthrie, Iowa. Wow, Hannah really had her hands full with this husband!
It is amazing how the newspapers help document C.C. Dalton’s locations here and there because of his crimes. I am sure, if I took the time to do more research, more articles could be found but I think there is enough evidence to see that his life probably didn't end well and it appears Hannah was not with him. Now if it was only this easy to find Hannah as, after the 1880 census, her paper trail ends along with her two youngest children, Sarah and Colby. I am curious how the other researchers came to the conclusion that her maiden name was “Mallicoat.”
As a tribute to this relative, I end this story with a couple of sentences from the obituary of her son, David Houston Wolfe (thanks to Jack Coffee for posting this on Find A Grave). “He often spoke of his mother who had gone on to Glory. The day before he died he said he could hear his mother calling “Come”.”
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