Looking at newspaper articles on genealoybank.com which is a pay service I found over 8,500 hits in California newspapers alone.

While I still not have been to the NARA in DC. every Union soldier should have had at one time a VOE (Volunteer Oath of Enlistment) which would have stated the age and former occupation and enlistment place and a DOR (Declaration of Recruitment) which contained additional information such as name and muster dates etc.

Many of the VOE's would end up at the respective county the soldier enlisted in at the county courthouses. But copies also be with his CMSR's. If his DOR stated he had been a farmer from Decatur County, Illinois this could be the smoking gun that some historians have tied to Black Bart being a farmer.

In one of the thousands of articles written in California newspapers I am going to list one. It is somewhat accurate in ways from my limited knowledge but not everything should be taken as the absolute truth with any newspaper article in my opinion. One item of interest beside Black Bart's family Bible was his Union discharge papers being found at his motel room. This was news to me and could further establish his service to the Union Army.

The newspaper is from the San Francisco Bulletin dated November 15, 1883 on page two.

"CONFESSION"

"BLACK BART, THE ROBBER AND POET ADMITS HIS GUILT"

"STOLEN TRESURES RECOVED DETECTIVES GUILDED BY THE HIGHWAY MAN"

"The detectives in charge of Black Bart or C. E. Bolton, the chivalrous road agent and the nineteenth century imitator of Robin Hood and Claude Duval, are still with their man in Calaveras County. They will return, it is expected tomorrow evening, but will leave the poetical lone highwayman to languish behind the prison bars of the San Andreas jail."

I have chosen not to fill in between these paragraphs because not much more is learned but will list the last paragraph.

"The detectives will get one-fourth of the treasure recovered. In addition they will receive a reward of $800.00 of which $300.00 is from Wells Fargo Company and $300.00 from the State and $200.00 from the government for arrest and conviction for robbing the mails. Black Bart's real name is now supposed to be C. E. Bolles, as this was the name inscribed in his family Bible, found is his room after his capture, and is also on a documentary discharge from the regular army, and also found in his room, together with an old snuff-colored suit of clothes in which it is thought his last robbery was committed. The prisoner was wounded while in the army in the right hip and the effects of the wound still affect his walking slightly. The detectives think he has some mountain resorts which they will endeavor to locate."