True West: Thug Life - Clell Miller

Think that you've had a tough day?
Clell Miller (left) and Bill Chadwell
just chilling after being killed

On 07 September 1876, eight men of the James-Younger Gang rode into the town of Northfield, Minnesota, bent on conducting a daring daylight bank robbery.  Three men (Jesse James, Bob Younger and Charlie Pitts) entered the bank while the other five (Frank James, Cole Younger, Jim Younger, Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell) stayed outside to stand guard and whoop it up in the streets, keeping people inside.  They counted on the townspeople being docile, not willing to fight for a bank.  They were wrong.  Everywhere they met resistance; from a bank teller not willing to open a safe, to townspeople armed with rifles from hardware stores shooting it out with the robbers.

Inside the bank, an assistant bank cashier (Joseph Heywood) was killed by the robbers for not cooperating.  In the streets, a recent immigrant from Norway, Nicolaus Gustafson was shot in the head.  It may have been that he didn't understand the warnings given in English to get out of the street.  It is also possible that he thought this was part of a wild west show that was supposed to be in town that evening. The townspeople fought back, reportedly wounding all of the gang members at some point.  Bill Chadwell was shot and killed by Anselm R. Manning from the Sciver Building.  Across from the bank, medical student Henry Wheeler took aim from the third floor of the Dampier House Hotel, killing Clell Miller.

Miller's Confederate States gravestone

The surviving six robbers rode off with a take of $26.10, mostly in rolls of nickels.  This was far from the thousands of dollars that they thought would be handed over by the bank staff.  The gang had read that entry to the vault was blocked by a time lock.  It was, but the lock hadn't been set.  If the gang had just tried to open the vault themselves, they could have made off with $17,000- $18,000 easily.

For two weeks, the gang felt their way through the backcountry of Minnesota, pursued by posses and pickets, trying to make it back to Missouri.  The men split up into two groups near Mankato; the James brothers rode back to Missouri, but the Youngers and Pitts ran out of luck at Hanska Slough near La Salle, Minnesota on 21 September.  In the shootout here, Charlie Pitts was killed and the Youngers captured.

Where's Clell?

In the aftermath of the robbery, the bodies of Miller and Chadwell were photographed for later identification and buried.  Much discussion has taken place recently as to what happened to the men's bodies.  One story is that the bodies were buried in the paupers section of the cemetery in Northfield.  Clell Miller's father came to Northfield, claimed his son's body and took it back for burial in Muddy Fork Cemetery in Kearney, Missouri.

Grand Forks skeleton

It is also possible that Henry Wheeler took one or both of the bodies for dissection in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  When  Miller's family heard of this, his father or brother went to claim the body.  After dissection, the remains were unidentifiable.  Supposedly, Wheeler kept Miller's body, since that was the robber he had shot.  The Miller family was given a body, possibly Chadwell's, to bury in Missouri.  Wheeler prepared the skeleton and took it with him to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where he opened a medical practice.  Upon retiring in 1923, Wheeler donated the skeleton to a local lodge of the Odd Fellows.  Wheeler was reported to have claimed that the skeleton was Miller's.  The skeleton was auctioned in the 1980's and bought by a private individual.

The world was a different place back then.  Public hangings, legal or vigilante were public spectacles.  People would crowd around the bodies for a picture,  If someone died, pictures would be taken of the bodies, especially if the deaths occurred in a notable event, such as this shoot-out.  Pictures would be sold for keepsakes.  People would cut pieces of clothing or even body parts off of the deceased for souvenirs.  Bodies of outlaws would be displayed as "Crime does not pay" advertisements.   Doctors might take bodies for dissection, skeletal preparation or even tanning the skin and making shoes or bags.  Such treatment would be considered ghoulish, cruel, indecent or some such stripe today.

Superimposed images of Grand Forks skull and Clell Miller

James Bailey, a native Minnesotan who is a professor of forensics at the University of North Carolina - Wilmington, has taken an interest in the case since 2010 and has performed an investigation of the skeleton.  By overlaying a CT image of the skeleton over the death picture of the Northfield robbers and aligning specific reference points, it is possible to exclude Bill Chadwell as the origin of the skeleton, but it is consistent with Clell Miller.  Attempts to obtain DNA from a femur (upper leg bone) of the skeleton failed, and the owner of the skeleton balked at removing teeth for DNA analysis.  Bailey and a representative of the Miller family have also failed to obtain a clear exhumation order for the remains buried in Missouri for DNA testing.  A judge did grant an exhumation order in 2012, but it was canceled when ground-penetrating radar picked up four graves in a row, without it being clear which one was supposed to be Clell Miller's.  Who is buried in Clell Miller's grave?  The world may never know.

Who was Clell Miller?

In the grand scheme of things, Clell Miller has become a mere footnote to the outlaw era in the Midwest.  A James gang member shot dead by a medical student while robbing a bank in Northfield, Missouri.  What path brought him there?

1870 US Census Entry for Miller Family - Clay County

Either Clell or Ed Miller

Clay County, Missouri forms part of the northern bank of the Missouri River.  This area of the state was populated mostly by families from Kentucky and Tennessee, and maintained cultural links to the South, including slavery.  The link was so tight that the Missouri River valley became known as Little Dixie.  The area could be very clannish, as many of the families had moved to Missouri from the same settlements of Kentucky and Tennessee.  The James, Hite, and Miller families all lived in the community of Danville, Kentucky before coming to Missouri.

Clell's parents were Moses W. and Emeline Thurmond Miller.  He was born Clelland (Cleland, Cleander) Miller on 15 December 1849.  He grew to be about 5' 8" and had dark auburn hair.  He was reputed to be fun-loving; the clown of the bunch.  When Clell was about 5, the battle over slavery in Kansas Territory broke out.  Guerrilla bands of pro-slavery Missourians (bushwhackers or border ruffians) and anti-slavery northerners (Jayhawkers) fought skirmishes along the border of Missouri and Kansas Territory.  The fighting and environment was lawless and harsh.  At about 14 years of age, Clell ran off and joined up with "Bloody" Bill Anderson's band of Confederate guerrillas.  In his three day stint serving the Confederacy, he fought in only one battle, being captured in the skirmish at present-day Orrick, Missouri that left Anderson dead.

Likely because of his age, Clell was not summarily executed, but taken to St. Louis and imprisoned in the Gratiot Street Prison.  His father came to St. Louis to procure Clell's release.  To do so, they had to assert that they had been a Union-supporting family and that Clell had never taken up arms against the Federal Government.  That was stretching it.

After this, Clell was apparently back on the family farm.   In the 1870 Census, he is enumerated with his family and his occupation is listed as farmer.  He must have joined up with the James and Youngers about 1871.  He was arrested for participating in the 03 June 1871 Corydon, Iowa Ocobock Bank robbery, but acquitted in a jury trial.  Here he stated that he was not a member of the James Gang, but might as well join them, since his reputation had been injured so much at the trial.  He participated in a long string of robberies and killings with the James Gang up until that September day in 1876.

Anatomical features drawn on death photo

The killing shot

This death picture of Clell Miller is one that I have seen in Old West magazines since the time I was about 10.  I always looked at it and wondered how he was killed by a single shot that doesn't appear to be through his heart or lungs, and just how bad his acne was (or if he'd been kicked and beaten by the Northfield crowd after he was killed).  Doing some background reading, I found that before the fatal shot, Clell had taken two shotgun blasts from Elias Stacy's shotgun, one to the face and a second in the back. The first shot knocked Miller out of the saddle, but he remounted and then was hit by the second shot, before Wheeler's shot struck the death blow just below the left shoulder. I understood why that shot was fatal shot when I learned some anatomy.

The recent interest in Clell Miller has produced a variety of images comparing his body, the Grand Forks Odd Fellows skeleton and his wounds.  One of these shows quite clearly that Wheeler's rifle shot probably hit Miller in his left subclavian artery, which branches directly off of the aorta.  With the heart pushing large amounts of blood out of the artery, he probably bled out in a matter of minutes. Without first aid from someone who knows exactly what to do, that is still a fatal wound.  Cole Younger and Charlie Pitts tried to get Clell to a horse, but the amount of blood they saw on Miller convinced the others that he was dead.  Miller's death really shook the gang, and it was then that ALL of them understood that they were beat and would be lucky to escape.  Some witnesses reported that after the others had left, he tried to get to his hands and knees, then fell over dead.  From entry to the bank until now, seven minutes had passed.

Ed Miller and Jesse James

After Clell's death, the Miller family's association with the James did not end.  That may or may not have been their choice.  After the loss of the best of their gang, Jesse and Frank started gathering up a new gang after laying low a while.  Ed Miller became part of the crew with Clarence and Wood Hite (James' cousins), Charlie Ford, and Dick Liddil, among others.  These men were nowhere near the caliber of the Youngers, They didn't have the forceful personality of Cole Younger for discipline and Frank began to lose his appetite for the outlaw life.  Drink, loose lips, in-fighting and paranoia pervaded this later version of the gang.  Depending on who you talk to, Ed Miller started talking too much about the Kansas City Fair robbery or about a robbery in the planning.  One day in 1881, Ed Miller and Jesse James rode off together, but only Jesse returned.  Kansas City newspapers reported Ed Miller's death in October 1881.  For what it's worth, the Miller family maintains that Jesse and Ed faked Ed's death, so he could leave the outlaw life and spent the rest of his days in Tennessee.

Ben and Clell

Getting there

Where exactly is here?  Clell Miller's memorial marker, at least, is in Muddy Fork Cemetery on MO-33, just north of Kearney, Missouri.  He shares a marker with his father and sister.  Benjamin and I were tooling around looking at James Gang tombstones after he got off of work early one day.  He was installing plumbing in the Casey's store in Kearney.  Jesse James' grave is just down the road from Muddy Fork in Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

Waypoint:  Latitude: 39.4195036 N; Longitude 94.3707784 W

Clelland D. Miller
Died Sept 7, 1876

Moses W. Miller
May 26, 1798 - Jan 3, 1879

Francis M. Miller
Died Sept 21, 1874

Further Reading

Northfield Bank Robbery

Exhumation order approved

Exhumation order canceled