Enter now to win a copy of More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen

Enter now to win a copy of

More Tales Behind the Tombstones:

More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious, Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen

Visitors walking through the graveyards often find themselves stepping over weeds that have grown around fallen headstones. Sadly, the final resting place for many small families and communities has been left unattended or even forgotten. The seasons have taken with them the names chiseled in the granite, nearly erasing all memory of those mourned beneath the dilapidated tombstones.

Aside from the normal life and death cycle in New England, it is estimated that one in every seventeen people died on the journey west from 1847 to 1900. Oftentimes the men, women, and children who died en route to the gold hills of California and Colorado, or the fertile farmlands of the Pacific Northwest, were buried on the spot where they died. A proper burial and lengthy funeral were forfeited in favor of pushing on to the far-off destination. Traveling across the plains demanded that sojourners be constantly on the move. The threat of bad weather, hostile Indians, wild animals, or desperados kept pioneers from staying too long in one area.

Contrary to popular belief, the thousands of settlers who perished on the trail west did not solely die in gunfights or Indian attacks. Scorching deserts, starvation, and dehydration claimed many lives. Poor sanitation bred typhoid, cholera, and pneumonia. Blood poisoning brought on by a cut or scrape from a sharp object, or shock from an accident, such as a wagon spilling over with travelers inside, brought about numerous deaths as well.

There were pioneers, though, who could not be persuaded to forgo a ceremonial funeral if they lost a loved one. Nothing could keep them from burying the deceased in a plot where they could be remembered. A section of ground in a scenic location with trees to shade the grave was the preferred spot. To leave someone dear in an unmarked plot was impossible for some to accept.

As pioneers established homesteads and built towns around their farms and ranches, the dead were buried either in family cemeteries near where they had lived or next to churches where they worshipped. For nineteenth-century ancestors, it was important to remember death. The fact of death served as a reminder to those who continued on to persevere and do good works as preparation for a final judgment by a righteous God.

Whatever the cause of death or wherever it occurred, the need to take care of a deceased person’s remains was a necessity. Until the discovery of formaldehyde in 1867, and the subsequent introduction of the product and its use as an acceptable embalming method in America in 1872, there were limited ways to deal with the dead. Immediate burial was preferred. If a person died in the winter and the ground was frozen and a grave could not be dug, the body was stored in a barn or woodshed until the earth thawed and the departed could be buried.

As in the cities, carpenters in mining camps or cattle towns were usually the undertakers, since they had the tools and supplies to build coffins. The wooden caskets might be lined with white linen if it was supplied by the deceased’s family or friends. Sextons, people who looked after a church and churchyard, would determine where in the cemetery a person was to be buried. They would also dig the grave and fill it again.

People who lived in small towns would often gather at the graveyard where the coffin was placed atop two sawhorses. For those who lived in less rural areas, there were hearses to rent to transport the dead from the undertaker’s office to the cemetery. The vehicle had glass sides and was decorated with elaborate carvings and brass ornaments. On top were tall, shako-like plumes, one on each corner.

While cemeteries house the dead, the tombstones record not only their pleasures, sorrows, and hopes for an afterlife, but also more than they realize of their history, ethnicity, and culture. In this book are true stories about thirty real people who are buried in marked and unmarked graves throughout the frontier and elsewhere. How these famous and infamous individuals lived and then exited this world is reflected on their headstones. Tales of their demise add details of their courage, adventure, hardship, and joy not included on those tombstones.

The dead included in the book More Tales Behind the Tombstones will never exhaust their potential to enlighten.

In Dodge City, Kansas, the important men made their headquarters at the Long Branch Saloon, opening in 1883 by Charles Bassett, Ford County’s first Sheriff, and A. J. Peacock.  The Long Branch offered a high-toned sporting atmosphere, with only top-grade liquor served at the bar.  Its customers included railroad men, cattle kings, buffalo hunters, and travelers.  The saloon took its name from the celebrated sporting resort on the Atlantic seaboard, since many of the men in Dodge came from the Eastern states.  There was no “Miss Kitty” and no dancing in the original Long Branch.  In 1876, there were nineteen placed licensed to sell liquor in Dodge.  Other well-known saloons on Front Street were Beatty and Kelley’s Alhambra; A. B. Webster’s Alamo; Muellar and Straeter’s Old House Saloon; the Opera House Saloon; the Junction Saloon; and the Green Front.  Of course, all the dance halls and most of the hotels had bars, and no one in Dodge was more than one hundred yards from some place of liquid refreshment, open seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.  When a new saloon was opened or a new management took over, a magnificent free lunch was laid out and the men were expected to come to the joint to celebrate.

As railroad service improved and Dodge became more prosperous, carload after carload of beer rolled in every summer.  In July 1879, a facetious note appeared in the Dodge City Times:

“A young lady, Miss Ann Heiser, is stopping the city at present.  A great many gentlemen have called upon her and express themselves well pleased with her general appearance.  The early criticism we have heard made is that the length of her neck is a little out of proportion to that of her body. The ‘out of proportion’ is to enable the fellows to embrace the neck.  Ann Heiser is a delusion too many persons hug.  It brings them to their beer.”

To learn more about sporting women like Miss Ann Heiser read the book Wicked Women.

In 1898, Dawson City in the Yukon Territory was the heart of the richest gold country on the continent.  To its theaters and dance halls the miners came for relief from the long, lonely hours spent working on their claims.  They laughed, drank, and threw their gold dust recklessly about.  The amenities offered in Dawson City were few, but basic:  drink, a woman, and a place to unload his gold dust.  Every other building carried the sign, “Gold Dust Bought,” while the rest catered to his sensual needs.

Mattie Silks, the notorious Denver courtesan, was on board the Susie on the last down-river trip of the 1898 season.  She was leaving Dawson because her gambler-lover, Cortez Thompson, could not stand the bitter rain and snot of the Klondike.  Mattie and Cortez had come to Dawson City figuring that the special merchandise Mattie offered was in far greater demand in the northern reaches than in Denver.  The Dawson City Mattie found looked much the same as the towns of the American prairie and Rockies.  Built on a flat in a bend of the river, Dawson was a collection of hastily erected log and frame shanties, a little larger than its neighbor, Lousetown.

Jenkins, proprietor of the Sour Dough saloon, rented Mattie a good-sized frame building on Second Street for $350.00 a month.  Her leading competitor was Beatrice Larne.  Mattie’s expenses were high, but her total receipts were enormous.  Each of her girls was earning about fifty dollars a day, even after paying Mattie her fifty per cent of the take plus board.  Mattie’s sales of liquid refreshments brought huge profits, for she sold champagne for thirty dollars a quart with the boarder’s cut on each being only five dollars.  Whiskey was fifty cents a shot, but there was no beer or gin in Dawson.  Most of the whiskey was made from grain alcohol which cost sixty dollars a gallon; when diluted and colored and sold by the drink, the gallon brought in over $130.

Mattie brought along the old gold scales she once used at Georgetown and a little square of thick carpet to catch the dust which spilled from the scales.  As usual, Cortez was no help with the business, because he spent most of his time playing faro at Joe Cooper’s Dominion Saloon.  Late in the summer, Cortez developed a heavy cold and treated it with his favorite remedy, whiskey.  Mattie, too, couldn’t stand the constant downpour which left Dawson’s streets ankle-deep in mud.  All around her, Mattie saw evidence of colds which developed into pneumonia, and she dreaded the approach of the long Artic winter.  She wanted to go home to Denver, so she squared up Cortez’s gambling debts and booked passage on the Susie, taking back a net profit of $38,000 for her ninety days at Dawson City.

To learn more about Mattie Silks and other sporting women in the

Old West read Wicked Women.