Born: July 21, 1851
Died: July 21, 1878

“Sam Bass was not much of an outlaw as outlaws go. He was no gunman, nor was he a killer,“ wrote Charles L. Martin in A Sketch of Sam Bass, the Bandit. But somehow, he was transformed into a folk hero even before he was betrayed by a gang member.

A rough childhood

One of ten children, Sam Bass was born in Indiana on July 21, 1851. Two of his siblings died as infants, and one of his brothers was killed fighting as a member of the Sixteenth Indiana Regiment during the Civil War (1861—1865). His mother, Elizabeth Sheeks Bass, died at the age of thirty-nine, shortly after her tenth child was born. Sam was just ten years old at the time.

Sam’s father, Daniel Bass, married a woman who had two children from an earlier marriage. Together the couple...