Time is running out! Enter now to win two books! Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and the new book More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.
Wild Bill Hickok had many female admirers in his lifetime, but Agnes Lake Thatcher was the only woman who completely captured his heart. The man known as the “deadliest pistolero in the Old West” often declared to his friends that he preferred being a bachelor. It was a surprise to many when he married a widow several years older than himself. The circumstances that resulted in so great a change were romantically singular and worthy of record.
Mrs. Hickok was born Agnes Louise Messman on August 23, 1826, in Doehm, Alsace, France. Her mother died when she was four years old, and, shortly thereafter, her father took Agnes to America. The Messmans settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, when she was sixteen years old. As a child Agnes was an avid horseback rider. Her father helped mold her remarkable skill into a circus routine. In 1841, Agnes met a circus clown named William Lake Thatcher. He was a native New Yorker and used his connections to secure a job for Agnes with the circus he worked for, the Spaulding and Rogers Circus.
In addition to her impressive equestrian abilities, she also performed daring feats of skill on a tight wire. The August 23, 1907, edition of the New York Times reported that she “made a higher ascent on a wire than any performer of her day in 1858.” By 1859, she was billed the “queen of the high wire” and the most famous equestrienne the American circus had ever known.
To learn more about Agnes Hickok and others like her who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.
