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The Notorious Men of the Wild West

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2019 32 min

32. The Church Boys Who Went Bad

The parents of Frank Reno (1837 – 1868), who was raised in Jackson County, Indiana, were strictly religious types. They made sure that their kids observed all the strictures, never missed church and spent all day Sunday reading the Bible. It backfired with Frank and his younger brother, John, who rebelled and turned bad early on.

By their early teens, the Reno brothers were notorious delinquents, drinking, brawling, cheating travelers in crooked card games, and were suspected by the community of horse theft and of committing a series of arsons around the county. Things got so bad that, to escape a backlash, their father was forced to flee, taking Frank and John and two other sons, to live in Missouri for a few years. They eventually returned to Indiana in 1860, but their earlier shenanigans had not been forgotten.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.