Little Britches (outlaw) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jennie Stevens, or Little Britches
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|---|---|
| Born | 1879 |
| Occupation | American outlaw |
| Spouse(s) | Divorced from Benjamin Midkiff and Robert Stephens Possible third husband unknown |
| Parent(s) | Daniel and Lucy Stevenson |
Little Britches (born Jennie Stevenson in 1879; date and place of death unknown) was an outlaw in the American Old West associated with Cattle Annie. Their exploits are fictionalized in the 1981 film Cattle Annie and Little Britches, directed by Lamont Johnson and starring Diane Lane as Little Britches.
Background
Born Jennie Stevens in Barton County in southwestern Missouri, to a farm couple, Daniel and Lucy Stevenson, her one known sister was Victoria Estella Stevenson. Apparently she dropped the "son" from her maiden name; her second husband was apparently named "Stephens", not "Stevens." For a time, therefore, she was Jennie Stevenson Stephens. The Stevenson family lived during part of the 1880s in Seneca in Newton County, also in southwestern Missouri on the eastern border of Oklahoma, then Indian Territory. The Stevensons then moved into the Creek Nation at Sinnett in Pawnee County in the northern Indian Territory. Little Britches followed stories of the Bill Doolin gang written by such dime novelists as Ned Buntline, like her friend Cattle Annie (born Anna Emmaline McDoulet).
Alternate reports
The Oklahoma Journal of History and Culture contends that Tilghman likely had nothing to do with the apprehension of Little Britches. Newspapers credited both captures to Lake, Burke, and Frank Canton, another deputy marshal. The publication further contends that neither girl had been involved with the Doolins or any other outlaw gang.
Imprisonment
The two young women were tried for horse theft and the sale of alcohol to the Indians before U.S. District Judge Andrew Gregg Curtin Bierer, Sr. (1862-1951) at his court in Guthrie in Logan County, capital of the Oklahoma Territory. Little Britches was incarcerated for two months in the Guthrie jail (under the name Jennie Midkiff, from her first husband of six weeks) as a material witness in a murder trial. She had witnessed a shooting while working as a domestic. Little Britches' two-year prison sentence for horse theft and selling whisky to the Indians began in 1895 at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham. She was released in October 1896, under terms of good behavior, and returned to her parents. Her final years are unknown, though some stories circulated that she married for a third time, reared a family, and led an exemplary life thereafter in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Cattle Annie received a one-year sentence and was also sent to Framingham in 1895. Because of poor health, she was paroled, but remained in Framingham for some time.
Other uses of Little Britches
"Little Britches" is used across the United States as the proper name of numerous business, including day-care centers, pediatric clinics, clothing stores, bakeries, boutiques, and even an employment agency for nannies. Nor should Little Britches the outlaw be confused with:
- The childhood autobiography by Ralph Moody entitled, Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers (1991), the story of a boy growing up on a ranch near Littleton, Colorado.
- The National Little Britches Rodeo Association, which bills itself as the "oldest, continuing junior rodeo association in the nation," directed toward the interests of western-minded youth. The National Little Britches Rodeo Finals are held annually in late July at the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo.
