Skeleton in the closet - Stories for my grandchildren

Second in an occasional series on the family history

There is a distant relative in our family tree with an interesting, if dubious, set of associated facts. This relative:

• was mentioned by name in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath
• had a ballad written about him by Woody Guthrie that has been recorded by Bob Dylan, The Byrds and Joan Baez, among others
• has been the subject of a number of books, including one co-written by Larry McMurtry
• has been portrayed in movies by John Erickson (1960), Robert Conrad (1965), Fabian (1970), Steve Kanalay (1973), Martin Sheen (1974), Bo Hopkins (1975) and Channing Tatum (2009)
• was named Public Enemy Number One by J. Edgar Hoover

Let me clear. Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, though a fifth cousin of my mother, therefore my fifth cousin,  another generation removed, didn't come to many family reunions in his day. He was busy with other activities, namely robbing banks and running from the cops.

The genealogical record says Floyd was born on February 3, 1904 in Bartow County, Georgia. He grew up in Oklahoma after moving there with his family from Georgia in 1911, and spent considerable time in nearby Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri. The Wikipedia record has more: he was first arrested at age 18 after he stole $3.50 in coins from a local post office. Three years later he was arrested for a payroll robbery on September 16, 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri and was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served three and a half.

Entering into partnerships with more established criminals in the Kansas City underworld, he committed a series of bank robberies over the next several years; it was during this period that he acquired the nickname "Pretty Boy," a name he hated. During the period from 1929 to 1933, he was involved in or accused of a number of robberies and shootings, including the "Kansas City Massacre," a gunfight in which four policemen perished.

This brought the focus of J Edger Hoover and the FBI on Floyd, though historians doubt that Floyd was actually involved in this event. Floyd himself denied it to his dying breath, and even sent a postcard to the Kansas City police which read: "Dear Sirs- I- Charles Floyd- want it made known that I did not participate in the massacre of officers at Kansas City. Charles Floyd"

Floyd's life of crime came to a predictable end in a corn field near East Liverpool, Ohio, while being pursued by local law officers and FBI agents led by Melvin Purvis, famous for his dogged pursuit of Baby Face Nelson and Charles Dillon. The genealogical record simply states that he died October 22, 1934 and was buried in in Akins, Oklahoma. It does not state that it was one of the most well-attended funerals ever in the state of Oklahoma.

So how does the son of share-croppers Walter Lee and Minnie (Echols) Floyd, raised in the Cookson Hills of Oklahoma, go from callus-fingered cotton picker to trigger-fingered desperado and something of a folk hero, remembered in legend and in song? I suggest that his story has been told well by others, and I refer you to:

• McMurtry, Larry and Ossana, Diana, "Pretty Boy Floyd," Simon & Schuster; (a fictionalized version)
• Michael Wallis, "Pretty Boy, the Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd" St. Martin's Press, New York, 1992
• Merle Clayton "Union Station Massacre" 1975 BM Bobbs Merrill

For an overly-sympathetic, somewhat sensationalized telling, try Joseph Geringer's story at http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/outlaws/floyd/1.html

By the way, attribution for the photo above reads: "This image or file is a work of a Federal Bureau of Investigation employee, taken or made during the course of an employee's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain." How's that for permission to re-post?