four train and bank robbers famous in U.S. Western history: Grattan (“Grat”; 1861–92), William (“Bill”; 1863–94), Robert (“Bob”; 1870–92), and Emmett (1871–1937). Their older cousins were the outlaw Younger brothers.

Their father, Lewis Dalton, a rambler and saloonkeeper, abandoned his wife Adeline (née Younger), who was forced on her own to rear their 15 children during the difficult period of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The Daltons resided first in Cass county, Mo., then Coffeyville, Kan., then back in Missouri, and finally in the wild Oklahoma Indian Territory. The four future outlaws first worked as cowboys, but, in 1887, their older brother Frank, a federal deputy marshal, was killed by whiskey runners; in deference, Grat, Bob, and Emmett pinned on lawmen's badges. By 1889, however, they had drifted into horse stealing, while still wearing badges, and a year later were discredited and forced out of policing altogether and took up horse thievery full-time, gathering together a gang. In 1890–91 they took to robbing gambling houses, trains, and banks and were joined by their brother Bill, until then a married, respectable citizen, whose career had been wrecked by his being linked to his brothers.

On the morning of Oct. 5, 1892, Bob, Grat, and Emmett, together with Dick Broadwell and Bill Powers, rode into Coffeyville, Kan., intent upon robbing the town's two banks. They were recognized and, coming out of one bank, were met by wild gunfire from vigilante citizens. All in the band were killed except Emmett, who was wounded and spent 14 years in Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. (He was pardoned in 1907, reformed, and led a respectable businessman's life in Los Angeles until his death on July 13, 1937.) Before the Coffeyville raid, Bill Dalton had returned to Oklahoma, later joining Bill Doolin's gang and then forming his own gang. On June 8, 1894, while he was playing with his daughter on the front porch of his farm home in Ardmore, Okla., lawmen crept up on him from behind and shot him dead.