Journal Notes

According to Kate is coming to bookstores everywhere on October 1.

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.

Mollie Moses, a disheveled woman in her 40s, sat alone in her rundown Kentucky home, crying.  She wiped her eyes with the hem of her tattered black dress and glanced up at a portrait of William Cody hanging over a cold fireplace.  On the dusty coffee table in front of her lay several letters carefully bound together with a faded ribbon.  The woman’s feeble fingers loosened the tie and slowly unfolded one of the letters.  Tears slid down her cheeks as she read aloud.

My Dear Little Favorite…I know if I had a dear little someone whom you can guess, to play and sing for me it would drive away the blues who knows but what someday I may have her eh!…  I am not very well, have a very bad cold and I have ever so much to do.  With love and a kiss to my little girl – From her big boy, Bill.

William Cody – 1885

Mollie closed her eyes and pressed the letter to her chest, remembering.  From the moment she first saw Buffalo Bill Cody at a Wild West performance, she had been captivated by him.  He was fascinating – a scout, hunter, soldier, showman, and ranchman.  Mollie was swept away by his accomplishments, reputation, and physical stature.

In September of 1885 the enamored young woman from Morganfield, Kentucky, set about to win the heart of the most colorful figure of the era.

Mollie was an attractive widow, intelligent and sophisticated.  The letters she wrote to Cody reflected her maturity and interested Buffalo Bill.  Her correspondence did not read like that of a love-struck girl but of an experienced woman.  The death of her husband and only child many years prior had transformed the once impetuous girl into a driven, determined woman.  Mollie was also educated and well read, and an accomplished artist and seamstress.

Cody found those aspects of her character quite appealing.  He responded to her letters often, forwarding his itinerary to her as well, with hopes the two could meet at some point.  When at last they did, he was pleased to see that she was as lovely as she was intelligent.  On November 11, 1885, the couple began a six-month affair.

Your kind letter received.  Also, the beautiful little flag which I will keep and carry as my mascot, and every day I wave it to my audiences I will think of the fair donor.  I tried to find you after the performances yesterday for I really wished to see you again…It is impossible for me to visit you at your home much as I would like to have done so.  Many thanks for the very kind invitation. 

I really hope we’ll meet again.  Do you anticipate visiting the World’s fair at New Orleans if you do will you please let me know when you are there…Enclosed please find my route.  I remain yours.

William Cody – November 1885

As the romance between Mollie and Bill grew, she extended numerous invitations for him to come and visit her.  Managing the Wild West Show demanded a lot of his time, and he was unable to get away as often as Mollie wanted.

My Dear…you say you are not my little favorite or I would take the time to come to see you.  My dear don’t you know that it is impossible for me to leave my show.  My expenses are $1,000 a day and I can’t.  I would come if it were possible and I can’t say when I can come either, but I hope to someday.

William Cody – March 1886

Cody could not break free from his business, but Mollie persisted.  She requested that some of his personal mementos be sent instead.

“If you cannot be here, I must have something of you near me,” she wrote him.

My Dear Little Favorite…Don’t fear I will send a locket and picture soon.  Little Pet, it’s impossible for me to write from every place.  I have so much to do.  But will think of you from every place.  Will that do?  With Fond Love…Will.

William Cody – April 1886

Molly worried about Cody’s wife, Louisa, and the hold their twenty-year marriage had on him.  In one of Cody’s letters to Mollie, he tried to ease her troubled mind and heart.

My Dear Little Favorite…Now don’t fear about my better half.  I will tell you a secret.  My better half and I have separated.  Someday I will tell you all about it.  Now do you think any the less if me?  I wish I had time to write you a long letter to answer all your questions and tell you of myself, but I have not the time and perhaps it might not interest you…With love and a kiss to my little girl from her big boy.

William Cody – April 1886

Despite his constant reassuring, Mollie was not convinced that Cody and his wife were destined for divorce.  When it became clear to her that Cody could not or would not fully commit to her, she requested a spot in his show.

She reasoned that this was the only way she would be able to be with him all the time.  Mollie was not without talent.  She was a fine horsewoman, and that, along with her romantic involvement with Cody, helped persuade him to invite her to join his troupe.

Mollie and Buffalo Bill were to meet in St. Louis, a scheduled stop for the show.  Mollie was to come on board as a performer at that time.  To make her feel welcome and show his affections, Cody purchased his lover a horse.  The act endeared him to her even more.

My Dear Mollie…I presume you are getting about ready to come to St. Louis.  Wish you would start from home in time to arrive in St. Louis about the 2^nd or 3^rd of May.  Go to the St. James Hotel if I ain’t there to meet you.  I will be there any how by the 3^rd.  I have got you the white horse and fine silver saddle.  Suppose you have your habit.  Will be glad to see you.  With love, W.F.C.

William Cody – 1886

Mollie’s days with Wild West Show were difficult.  Adapting to the rigorous traveling schedule was hard and riding her horse day after day left her stiff and sore.  Eventually Mollie lost interest in the famous program and tired of trying to win over the heart of its general manager.

Within a few years after parting with Cody, Mollie’s financial situation worsened dramatically.  Mollie Moses returning to her home in Kentucky, where she fell into a life of poverty.  She was forced to sell off many of the mementos Cody gave her and live off the generosity of strangers to keep herself in food.  The two souvenirs she would never part with were the silver saddle and Cody’s picture.

Rodents shared her house with her – rats she called her “pets.”  One evening her pets bit her severely, causing her to become ill.  She eventually died of complications from the bites.  She was forty-three years old.  Historians speculate that the demise of her relationship with Buffalo Bill left her despondent and without the will to live.

According to Kate arrives in book stores on October 1.

Enter to win a copy of Kate’s story now.

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

Blood spattered across the front of the dark-eyed, brunette gambler Belle Siddons, as she peered into the open wound of a bandit stretched in front of her. Biting down hard on a rag, the man winched in pain as she gently probed his abdomen with a wire loop. She mopped up a stream of blood inching its way to the crude wooden table where he was lying.

Two men on either side of the injured patient struggled to keep his arms and legs still as the stern-faced Belle plunged the loop further into his entrails. “How do you know about gunshots,” one of the rough looking assistants asked? “My late husband was a doctor and I worked with him,” Belle replied. “Is he going to die,” the other man inquired? “Not if I can help it,” Belle said as she removed the wire loop. She shifted through the tissue and blood attached to the instrument until she uncovered a bullet. She smiled to herself as she tossed it into a pan sitting next to her and then set about stitching the man’s wound closed.

When Belle decided to go west in 1862, she envisioned a comfortable frontier home, a life-long husband and several children. But fate had other plans for the head-strong woman many cowhands admitted was a “startling beauty.”

Belle’s story began in Jefferson City, Missouri where she was born sometime in the late 1830s. Her parents were wealthy land owners who made sure their daughter was well educated. She attended and graduated from the Missouri Female Seminary at Lexingtion, Missouri. Belle’s uncle was the state’s Governor, Claibourne Fox Jackson. She spent a great deal of time with him traveling in elite circles that elevated the charming teenage to the toast of society.

When the war between the states erupted, Missouri residents were divided between support for North and South. Belle and her family were Southern sympathizers, actively seeking ways to crush the Union’s agenda. The attractive, young Ms. Siddons, fraternized with troops training in the area, hoping to glean valuable information from them. They were enamored with her and in their zeal to impress her, shared too much about military plans and the position of soldiers. Belle passed those secrets along to rebel intelligence.

Her deceptive actions were found out by General Newton M. Curtis of the Union Brigade from New York. A warrant was issued for Belle’s arrest in 1862 and she was apprehended 50 miles south of St. Genevieve on the Mississippi. When Belle was captured, she was found with proof of her duplicitous behavior in her possession. She had detailed plans of the stops of the Memphis and Mobile Railroad. The rail line was being used by the Union Army to transport supplies and weapons. When questioned about the crime Belle proudly admitted being a spy. She was tried, found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison. She was released after having only served 4 months.

According to Kate arrives in book stores on October 1.

Enter to win a copy of Kate’s story now.

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

It wasn’t uncommon in the Old West for sporting women to fight with one another over territory or money.  In El Paso, Texas, competition was especially keen between two popular madams, Big Alice Abbott and quick-tempered Etta Clark across the street.  The continuous argument finally erupted in a fight, the mention of which brought uproarious guffaws in the saloons for months to come.  Around 9:30 on the warm spring evening of April 18, 1886, a police squad was sent to investigate a disturbance at one of the houses on Utah Street.  The whole area was in an uproar as a huge woman lay shot and bleeding in the dusty street, while a petite redhead, cruelly beaten, sobbed hysterically in one of the houses.

The officers somehow pieced together the story.  Bessie Colvin, one of Big Alice’s in-residence girls, owed her $125 “back rent,” but refused to pay up.  Bessie, full of whiskey and false courage, stood firm as she and Alice put on a screaming and cursing match which awed all passersby.  Bessie flounced out, dashed across to Etta Clark’s brothel, and offered her services.  Redheaded Etta promptly accepted, so Bessie tore back to her former home, told Big Alice she was leaving, then promptly took off again.  Big Alice, with her girls Nina Ferrall and Josie Connaly at her heels, huffed and puffed across the street.  Alice yelled and pounded on Etta’s door until it was opened a crack.  Big Alice flung herself against the door, ripping it from the hinges and mashing Etta’s face in the process.  At this moment, Alice spied her former girl walking out of Etta’s sitting room.

Enraged, Alice stomped on through the broken door, shoving Etta violently aside.  The redheaded Etta, deciding she needed protection, reached for a brass gas-lighter.  (This was a heavy wick-tipped rod 2 ½ feet long and ½ inch in diameter, used to light the gas burners.)  The tiny Etta drew herself up and shook the lighter in Big Alice’s face.  Bessie was whimpering in the corner.  Now Alice, blind with anger, raised her huge fist and hit Etta in the face as hard as she could.  Bessie ran to help Etta, but was grabbed by Alice, who ran out the door, pulling Bessie along with her.

Etta ran to her room and came back with a Colt .45 in her hand.  She pointed the weapon at Big Alice, who was facing her on the porch.  The gun went off, enveloping both women in a cloud of smoke.  Alice looked down in horror at the blood spreading from a spot between her thighs.  She staggered to the center of the street as Etta fired again and missed.

It took six strong men to carry the big woman to her house.  It made a dramatic scene:  the helpless female, the girls weeping and wailing, and the men straining and stumbling under their mammoth burden.  Doctor A. L. Justice was called and, upon arriving at the scene, reported that Big Alice was seriously wounded.  Etta Clark was put in jail pending a hearing.

By April 27, nine days later, Big Alice was out of danger and the preliminary trial was held in her room.  Justice L. H. Clark bound Etta over to the Grand Jury under $2,000 bond.

Nothing funny about this, you say?  True enough-but it was the aftermath of this unfortunate incident that sent El Paso rocking with laughter.  The Herald’s story was printed under a banner headline with all the details in typically turgid prose.  The reporter, trying to be precise in pinpointing Alice’s wound, wrote that Big Alice had been shot in the “public” arch.  In Alice’s case, this anatomical description was precise, indeed.

To learn more about soiled doves of the Old West read

Wicked Women.

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

Rosa May sat beside the bed of a dying miner and wiped the sweat off his feverish brow. She looked around his rustic, one-room cabin, past the sparse furnishings, and fixed her eyes on a tattered photograph of an elderly man and woman. “Those are my folks,” the man weakly told her. “They’re in Marshall County, Illinois. Where are your folks?”

The question stunned Rosa. No one ever asked about such things. No one ever asked her much at all. Conversation wasn’t what men were looking for when they did business with her. Rosa glanced out the window at a couple of respectable, well-dressed women. They watched her through the clouded glass, pointed, and whispered. She knew what they were saying without hearing it.  Rosa was just one of a handful of “sporting women” living in Bodie, California, in 1900 and she knew what people thought of her. It used to bother her years ago, but not now. It was an occupational hazard she’d learned to live with.

“Don’t you have people anywhere?” the miner asked. Rosa dabbed the man’s head with a cloth and smiled. “I don’t know anymore,” she answered. “If I did have, they’d be back in Pennsylvania.”  Rosa’s parents were Irish – hard, strict people. Rosa had dreamed of the day she would be out of their puritanical household. She had left home in 1871, at the age of sixteen and soon found there weren’t many opportunities for a poor, petite, uneducated girl with brown eyes and dark, curly hair. She ended up in New York, hungry, homeless, and eager to take any job offered. The job offered was prostitution and five years later she came west with other women of her trade, hoping to make a fortune off the gold and silver miners.

Prostitution was the single largest occupation for women in the West. Rosa hoped to secure a position at a posh brothel with crystal chandeliers, velvet curtains, and flowing champagne. The madams who ran such places were good to their girls. They paid them a regular salary, taught them about makeup, manners, and how to dress, and they only had to entertain a few men a night. If a high-class brothel wasn’t available, Rosa could take a job in a second-class house and work for a percentage of the profits, turning as many tricks as she could each night. If all failed, she could be a street walker or rent a “crib” at a boardinghouse. Cribs, tiny, windowless chambers, had oilcloths draped across the foot of the bed for customers in too big of a hurry to take off their boots.

Rosa May arrived in Virginia City, Nevada, in 1875 and went to work for a madam known as Cad Thompson. Cad was a widow who ran several parlor houses in town, including a three-story, brick structure called the “Brick House.” Cad and Rosa became fast friends, confiding in one another and talking about meeting their Prince Charming. “Whores dream of falling in love, too,” Cad frequently told Rosa.

To learn the rest of Rosa May’s story read
Wicked Women:
Notorious, Mischievous, and Wayward Ladies from the Old West

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

The soiled dove with the heart of gold is a stock character in thousands of stories about the Old West, and Idaho had such a character.  “Diamond-tooth Lil” was her name, and she was more famous for her tooth of gold than for her heart of gold.  Like most characters in western lore, Lil devoted her lifetime to perfecting her own legend and image.  Her gold tooth, prominent in the middle of her smile, was set with a large diamond to gain Lil instant recognition in any company.  And Lil loved it.  From childhood she had thirsted for fame.

All we know about Lil’s colorful life comes from her own stories, recounted through the years to just about anyone who would listen.  Whether her stories were true or not does not seem too important, for they make good telling.  Mae West’s characterization of “Diamond Lil” was based on the life of Idaho’s Lil, and in all accounts of her life, the stress lay on Diamond-tooth Lil’s beauty and glamor.  Words like “fabulous and exciting” are regularly used to describe her, although it was not Lil’s looks but her vitality and sense of showmanship which evoked such adjectives.

Evelyn Hildegarde was born Katie Prado near Vienna, Austrian, about 1880.  It appears that she and her parents-an Austrian father and a Bohemian mother-came to America when Katie was six-years-old.  When Katie ran away from home, she was only thirteen, but she was quite mature for her age and looked sixteen.  She had eloped with nineteen-year-old Percy Hildegarde and used his last name the rest of her life.

By her own account, Lil had a total of eight husbands, never worrying about ridding herself of a husband, but just taking another when the mood struck her.

Among the men in her life were some pretty colorful characters:  prizefighter Kid McCoy, Spider Kelly, Diamond-field Jack Davis, Tex Rickard, and Tom Sharkey.  Diamond-tooth Lil’s friendship with Diamond-field Jack was a natural.  The swaggering Jack had plenty of color all his own; although notorious as a gunman, his chief claim to fame was that he was almost hung for a murder he did not commit.  Perhaps Jack was the inspiration for Lil’s famous tooth, for she did not have one when they met in 1907 in the boomtown of Goldfield, Nevada.

Lil had been singing and dancing in music halls and gambling palaces for several years before she ran up against Jack.  She was the “toast of the Barbary Coast,” and a star at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, singing at the Anheuser-Busch Pavilion.  But somewhere along the way she got in on the gold rush to Alaska, then came back south to Silver City, Idaho.  Boise was her home from 1909 until 1943, during which time she ran rooming houses and opened the Depot Inn in 1933.  Diamond-tooth Lil’s experience as a “business woman” began years before, for she claimed she was a madam from the time she was thirteen, and ran large houses in Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and Seattle.

One of her “’bosses” in Chicago was said to be Al Capone, and it is no surprise that Lil was not repelled by the violence of the gangster era.  Lil herself had had a taste of violence years before, when she was shot at by an ex-husband in El Paso, Texas.  Charitable and generous, Lil felt a special sympathy for orphans, and when she left Boise for the warmer climate of California, she promised to will her famous tooth to the Boise Children’s Home.  But she died in California in 1967 at age eighty-nine, and the tooth which made her famous, was buried with her.

 According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

arrives in bookstores everywhere October 1.

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

The cold, grey January sky above Virginia City, Nevada, in 1867 unleashed a torrent of sleet on a slow-moving funeral procession traveling along the main thoroughfare of town. Several members of the volunteer fire department, Virginia Engine Company Number One, was first in a long line of mourners following after a horse drawn carriage transporting the body of soiled dove Julia Bulette. The Nevada militia band shuffled behind the hearse playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Black wreaths and streamers hung from the balconies of the buildings along the route which the remains of the beloved thirty-five-year-old woman was escorted. Miners who knew Julia wept openly. Out of respect for the deceased woman all the saloons were closed. Plummeting temperatures and icy winds eventually drove the majority of funeral-goers inside their homes and businesses before Julia was lowered into the ground.

Julia Bulette was murdered on January 19, 1867 at 11:30 in the evening in her home on North D Street in Virginia City. The fair but frail prostitute told her neighbor and best friend Gertrude Holmes she was expecting company, but did not specify who the company might be. Twelve hours later Gertrude discovered Julia’s lifeless body in bed. She had been beaten and strangled. Gertrude told authorities that Julia was lying in the center of the bed with the blankets pulled over her head and that the sheets under her frame were smooth. She told police that it appeared as though no one had ever been in the bed with Julia.

The authorities believed the scene had been staged. Marks on Julia’s body and tears on the pillow used to smother her indicated she struggled with her attacker. The murderer then set the room to look as though nothing was out of the ordinary. He covered Julia’s body in such a way that at a passing glance she would merely appear to be asleep. It had fooled the handyman she had employed to come in and build a fire for her each day. When the gentleman entered Julia’s home at eleven in the morning, he believed she was sleeping. He explained to law enforcement officers that he was quiet as he went about his work and left when the job was done. A search of the modest home Julia rented revealed that many of her possessions were missing. The citizens of Virginia City were outraged by the crime.

According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

arrives in bookstores everywhere October 1.  

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

With the end of the Mexican War in 1846 and the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in California two years later, the West was opened with a rush.  Thousands upon thousands of Easterners – adventurous, avaricious, or discontented – left their homes to try their skill and luck in the wild West.  It was long before the names of such boomtowns as San Francisco, Deadwood, Tombstone, Leadville, and Denver became bywords back East.

Soon after the birth of any new boomtown, it was ready to swing into its first phase of growth.  Hustle was the name of the game.  Hustle to get the choice town lots.  Hustle to get the first shipment of new merchandise.  Hustle to build the first saloon, the first gambling palace, the first brothel.  There were great profits to be made, but the gamble was equally great.  The old warning of “haste makes waste” was never in the thoughts of the boomtown entrepreneurs.  Their only object was to dig the gold and silver from the miners’ pockets before someone else did, to get a piece of the trail hands’ hard-earned cash before it was all spent.

In the rush, all types of people appeared.  The first was the prospective saloonkeeper, who knew he was starting a sure thing.  Not long after him came the girl of the “line,” the row of small houses on the outskirts of town where prostitutes plied their time-honored trade.  A successful and ambitious chippy might aspire to become a fancy madam, operating a first-class parlor house.

Typically, the first saloon in a nascent boomtown was a tent in which a board was set across two barrels to form a bar.  The saloonkeeper ladled out his whiskey in tin cups to the thirsty men.  By the time the proprietor shifted his established to a sturdier structure, he might have procured a few girls to sell their services to the patrons of the bar.  The saloonkeeper’s next step was the acquisition of a piano, and pianist, both brought into the boomtown at great trouble and expense.

At the time of the Mexican War, the keyboard virtuosos were playing “Clarin de Campana” or “The Trumpet of Battle.”  Then when the California gold rush came along, the favorite was “Hang town Gals.”  Through the 1880’s and 1890’s, saloon music was quieter and more romantic: “Little Annie Roonie,” “You’re the Flower of My Heart, Sweet Adeline,” “She’s More to be Pitied Than Censured,” “A Bird in a Gilded Cage.”  At the turn of the century, after Scott Joplin wrote his “Maple Leaf Rag,” the popular songs the “Professor” played all had a ragtime jingle – except when both pianist and patrons were weepily drunk.  At such times, usually in the wee hours of the morning, the man at the ivories would play, with many eloquent and fanciful hand gestures, the sentimental and slower-paced songs of Stephen Foster, or perhaps “Genevieve,” “After the Ball,” or “Only One Girl in the World for Me.”

When a preacher invaded the dim precincts of demon whiskey to bring “The Work” before it was too late, he was treated with courtesy, even when his host was assailed as “a fiend in human form.”  The poker players threw in their cards and pocketed their chips and the bar was closed as the evangelist mounted the Keno platform.  The proprietor and the bartenders stood with folded arms during the devotions, then joined heartily in song as the piano played “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.”

There was no architectural standard for the early Western saloon.  The tent served for a year or so, until it could be replaced by a structure of log or clapboard, or adobe.  In short, the saloon was fashioned from whatever was most readily available.  Seldom did the exterior have visual appeal, and never did it need it.  Visual appeal was to be found inside, at the foundation of the entire business – the bar

From about 1840 to 1880, bar-making was one of the country’s significant crafts, with many a wood smith reaching the pinnacle of his art in designing the fixtures for a saloon.  Crude chairs and tables were good enough for gambling, but the bar – had to show a richness which would suggest quality to the men who were bending an elbow.  As a saloon prospered and acquired tone and class, the decorations grew more elaborate.  Not uncommon were such grand features as red plush curtains, thick rugs instead of sawdust, and fancy chandeliers which sprayed a mist of perfume on the sweaty dancers below.

In almost every saloon the major attraction was a nude and nubile girl painted life-size on a canvas which hung just above the eye level of the men at the bar.  Many a proprietor would bet that in any given twenty-four-hour period no patron would enter his place without casting a glance at the nude.  And no one has heard of a bartender who lost that bet.  In the bigger saloons, one might see as many as a dozen examples of Saturday-night art.

Some emporiums would sell beer for a nickel a mug and whiskey for a dime a shot; others would charge as much as two bits for a glass of rotgut.  Signs on the Cyrus Noble Saloon in West Texas proudly advertised, “Fire Water and Poor Cigars.  Whiskey guaranteed under the National Pure Food Law.”

Fancy establishments prided themselves on stocking expensive imported beers.  In 1880, Lowenbrau wholesaled out of Chicago at $15.25 for a case of fifty bottles, so the retail price of a bottle must have been upwards of sixty cents – more than it costs today!  But it is hard to generalize about the retail price of booze in the Old West.  The price depended on the brand, the year, and what the traffic would bear.

Many establishments advertised a “free lunch” to attract customers and, once attracted, keep them thirsting for more refreshment.  The food was salted very liberally.  Buffet tables filled with sliced bread, hot sausages, beef, pork, crackers, pretzels, and cheese were open to all who invested in a glass of beer.

The saloon was the hub of the Western town.  Bar, restaurant, gambling house, town hall, hotel, brothel, and sometimes courtroom or church, the saloon was the first building constructed and the last business to go broke.  In the early days of the frontier town, there was no lodge, club, or pool hall where the men might gather.  So, when our rugged Western individualists felt the need for communal activity, they surged through the only doors available – the bat-wing doors of the saloon.

Since the leaders of the town hung around at the saloon, people went there to find them.  If a miner was shot, his wife rushed to the saloon to get the Doc or the sheriff, or the mortician.  If there was a nasty accident on the ranch, the injured man’s friends stuffed a dirty cloth in the wound, threw him across a horse and galloped into town and the saloon.

Death often visited the saloon.  Take the case of Ezra Williams, who got himself badly shot in California.  He was toted inside the local bar and stretched out on a table, under the hanging lamps, while Dr. Thomas D. Hodges removed the bullet.

Ezra groaned in pain.

“He’s mighty bad off,” said a gambler, “and I’ll bet he dies before sun-up.”

Doc Hodges, whose pride was deeply touched, angrily snapped back, “Fifty dollars says he don’t!”

“You’re on,” the gambler leered.  “Anybody else want to bet?”

Within a few moments, over $14,000 was wagered on Ezra’s life or death.  Dutch Kate, who later became a stagecoach robber, ambled in and bet a cool $10,000 Ezra would be on his feet before the sun shone again.  For hours everybody crowded around to watch the man and the ticking clock.  Finally, Ezra obliged Dutch Kate and checked out of the saloon only minutes before sun-up.

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

Cattle barons of the vast frontier such as John Chisum once held undisputed sway over the great public domain. He ruled like a lord of old over the Pecos country in New Mexico where desperate battles were fought between rival cattle barons for more grazing land.

Rancher John Simpson Chisum was born into an affluent family in Tennessee on a plantation on August 16, 1824. His parents relocated their five children to Red River County, Texas, in 1837. John was thirteen when his family settled in Paris, Texas. He worked a series of odd jobs before becoming the county clerk in 1852.

At the age of thirty, John ventured into cattle ranching with Stephen K. Fowler, a businessman from New York. The Half Circle P brand, owned by Chisum and Fowler, was seen on livestock across a great expanse of the land John purchased in Denton County, Texas. Stephen’s original investment of $6,000 resulted in a $100,000 profit in ten years.

Chisum used his portion of profitable shares to buy more land and cattle. In addition to running his own spread, which included five thousand head of cattle, John also managed livestock for other ranchers and ambitious investors. By 1861, John Chisum was recognized as one of the most important cattle dealers in North Texas.

When the Civil War started, John contracted with the military to supply beef to soldiers in the Trans-Mississippi Confederate Army Department. After the war he drove his cattle into eastern New Mexico to sell to the government for the cavalry and the Indian reservations. In 1867, John moved his base of operation to Roswell, New Mexico, where he already had more than one thousand head of cows. He established a series of ranches along a 150-mile stretch of the Pecos River. John’s empire grew to eighty thousand head of cattle and he hired more than one hundred cowboys to work the livestock.

John Chisum was involved tangentially with the Lincoln County Range War in 1878. The dispute initially began as a fight between cattlemen and two store owners over who rightfully controlled the trade of dry goods in the county. Cattlemen John Tunstall and his business partner, Alexander McSween, owned one of the stores, and they were being threatened by the owners of the competing establishment who had an economic stranglehold on the area. Each store owner organized his own men to protect his enterprises and homes from being overrun. Tunstall and McSween had in their employ Billy the Kid and his associates. John Chisum supported Tunstall’s efforts. His exact role in the dispute is unknown.

After Tunstall was murdered, Billy the Kid took Chisum to task over money he insisted John owed him for protection. Chisum disagreed, and Billy resented him for it. In 1880, Chisum helped get Pat Garrett, the sheriff who shot Billy the Kid, elected to office.

John Chisum’s cattle operations continued to thrive, and he shared his good fortune with his brother, James. John gave James his own herd of cattle to manage.

John contracted throat cancer in late 1883 and had surgery to remove the growth in 1884. He died on December 22, 1884, in Eureka, Arkansas, where he had been recuperating from the operation. His giant cattle empire was worth $500,000. Chisum never married, but it is believed he fathered two children with one of the slave women he owned named Jensie.

John Chisum’s body was laid to rest in Paris, Texas. He was sixty years old when he passed away.

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

“Now the nodding wild flow’rs may wither on the shore.  While her gentle fingers will cull them no more.  Oh! I sigh for Jeannie with the light brown hair.  Floating like a vapor, on the soft summer air—from “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” by Stephen Foster

Songwriter and composer Stephen Collins Foster was lying face down in a pool of his own blood when a housekeeper at a cheap New York boarding house found him on the morning of January 13, 1864. The man who had penned such popular tunes as “Oh! Susanna” and “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” collapsed from a fever while walking to a wash basin to get some water. He struck his head on the porcelain bowl and cut a large gash in his face and neck. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Stephen Foster was born on July 4, 1826, in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest of eleven children and from an early age displayed exceptional musical talent. At seven years old his parents gave him a flageolet, a sixteenth-century woodwind instrument. Within a short time, Stephen mastered the flute-like whistle and expanded his abilities to include harmonica, piano, and guitar. Although his talent captivated family and friends, he did not have a desire to perform. Stephen preferred to write and wanted to study music as a science.

In 1841, Stephen’s mother hired a tutor to teach her son the fundamentals of music as well as how to speak French and German. Stephen composed his first published song, entitled “Open Thy Lattice Love,” in 1842 at the age of seventeen. A short time later he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and took a job working for his brother as an accounting clerk. He wrote many more songs during this time, all of which were published, but the money he received for his work was next to nothing.

By 1850, he decided to abandon the accounting business and devote himself full-time to writing music. His gift for harmony and poetry led to the creation of such well-known tunes as “Camptown Races” and “My Old Kentucky Home.” During this time, he met Jane McDowell, the daughter of a physician from the Pittsburgh area. The two fell in love and were married on July 22, 1850. Stephen continued writing songs that were published and well received, but he realized very little financially for his music at the onset of his career because he allowed his work to be published without thought of compensation.  He earned $15,000 for the song “Old Folks at Home,” and many of his other tunes were equally as profitable.  Unfortunately, multiple publishers often printed their own competing editions of Stephen’s songs, paying him nothing and eroding any long-term monetary benefits.

Stephen’s struggles with managing his money and the loss of his parents as well as many of his siblings in a short time period proved more than he could bear. Consequently, he sought comfort in drinking. The alcohol soon became all-consuming and quickly became an issue in his marriage. Stephen became addicted and after numerous ultimatums and attempts to get him to stop drinking, Jane decided to take their daughter back to her parents’ home in Pittsburgh.

Stephen sank into a deep depression and continued drinking. He spent all his income on alcohol, and when he ran out of money, he sold his clothing to buy more to drink. He wore rags and went days without eating. His brothers and sister would step in to help, but Stephen would not and could not change. On Saturday evening, January 9, 1864, the thirty-seven-year-old man passed out in a drunken stupor in his hotel room. When he awoke, he was violently ill from liver failure and in his weakened condition he fell and hit his head.

Stephen’s wife Jane and one of his brothers came to the hospital to claim his body. Nurses gave his family his clothes along with 38 cents that were found in his pocket and a scrap of paper upon which he had written the words, “Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts.”

He was buried in Alleghany Cemetery in Pittsburgh, beside his mother. Upon his plain marble headstone is the simple inscription: “Stephen Foster of Pittsburgh. Born July 4, 1826. Died January 13, 1864.”

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More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws,

Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen

On the afternoon of August 18, 1895, United States Marshal Bill Tilghman and Deputy Marshal Steve Burke led their horses toward a small farm outside Pawnee, Oklahoma. The lawmen had tracked a pair of outlaws to the location and were proceeding cautiously when several gunshots were fired.

Marshall Tilghman caught sight of a Winchester rifle sticking out a broken window of a dilapidated cabin. He spurred his horse out of the line of fire just as the weapon went off. He steered his mount around the building and arrived at the backdoor the same time sixteen-year-old Jennie Stevens, alias Little Britches, burst out the house. She shot at him with a pistol while racing to a horse waiting nearby.

By the time Marshal Tilghman settled his ride and drew his weapon Jennie was on her horse. She turned the horse away from the cabin, kicked it hard in the ribs, and the animal took off. Tilghman leveled his firearm at the woman and shot. Jennie’s horse stumbled and fell, and she was tossed from the animal’s back, losing her gun in the process.

The marshal hopped off his own ride and hurried over to the stunned and annoyed runaway. Jennie picked herself up quickly and cursed her misfortune. She charged the lawman, dug her fingernails into his neck, and slapped him several times before he could subdue her. He was a battered man when he finally pinned her arms behind her back.

Back at the cabin, Deputy Marshal Steve Burke wrestled a gun away from thirteen-year-old Annie McDoulet, alias Cattle Annie, a rail-thin young woman wearing a gingham dress and a black, wide-brimmed straw hat. The pistol she had tried to shoot him with was lying in the dirt several feet in front of her.

Two years prior to their apprehension and arrest, Cattle Annie and Little Britches were riding with the Doolin gang, a notorious band of outlaws who robbed trains and banks. Enamored by the fame of the well-known criminals, the teenage girls had decided to leave home and follow the bandits. They helped the criminals steal cattle, horses, guns, and ammunition and warned them whenever law enforcement was on their trail.

Legend tells that Bill Doolin, leader of the Doolin gang, gave Cattle Annie and Little Britches their nicknames. Cattle Annie was born Anna Emmaline McDoulet in Kansas in 1882. Jennie Stevenson was born in 1879 in Oklahoma. Both girls had run afoul of the law before joining the Doolin gang. Each sold whisky to Osage Indians. According to the September 3, 1895, edition of the Ada, Oklahoma, newspaper the Evening Times, Jennie seemed to have “plied her vocation for a long time successfully, going in the guise of a boy tramp hunting work.” In between selling liquor to Indians and life with the Doolins, Jennie had married a deaf mute named MidKiff and Annie rustled livestock.

News of Cattle Annie and Little Britches’ arrest was reported in the August 21, 1895 edition of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa newspaper the Evening Gazette. “A deputy marshal and a posse arrested two notorious female outlaws but had to fight to make the arrest,” the article read. “The marshal’s posse ran into them and they showed fight. Several shots were fired before they gave up. One was in men’s clothing.”

The teenage outlaws were held in the jail in Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory until a trial was held. They were found guilty of horse stealing and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment at the Farmington Reform School in Massachusetts. Cattle Annie and Little Britches were model prisoners and only served three years of their sentence.

Annie returned to Oklahoma Territory, where she met and married Earl Frost in March 1901. The couple divorced after eight years. In 1912 Annie married a house painter and general contractor named Whitmore R. Roach. They had two sons and lived a respectable life in Oklahoma City. Annie McDoulet Frost Roach died from natural causes on November 7, 1978, at the age of ninety-five. Her obituary ran in the November 8, 1978, edition of the Oklahoma City newspaper The Oklahoman. The article noted that “she was a retired bookkeeper and member of the American Legion Auxiliary and the Olivet Baptist Church. She had five grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren. She was laid to rest at Rose Hill Burial Park in Oklahoma City.”

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