Before Jesse James and Billy the Kid became legend, two real brothers were already making headlines.
Milt and Ed Copeland, known in newspapers as the Solomon brothers, operated across Colorado and New Mexico under a shifting set of aliases. They robbed freight trains, escaped prison, kidnapped lawmen, and repeatedly evaded capture on the frontier.
The Solomon Gang: Outlaws by Any Name, draws on more than 150 historic newspapers, along with original court and prison records, to reconstruct their story. Rather than folklore, this is a documented account of how two men repeatedly reinvented themselves while staying one step ahead of the law.
The book follows manhunts, prison escapes, and the realities of frontier crime, grounded in primary sources.
My interest in genealogy began early, traveling with my mother to courthouses, libraries, and archives across the Midwest. That work eventually led to this project, which reconstructs my great-grandfather’s criminal history using original records and newspapers.
