This Day…

1881 – Michael O’Rourke, also known as Johnny Behind the Duce, killed Phillip Schneider at Charleston, Arizona.

1864 – Vigilantes hang Sheriff Henry Plummer.

1862 – Samuel Colt dies at the age of 47.

Future cowboy movie star, Tom Mix, is born in Pennsylvania.

1887 – Perry Owens is elected sheriff of Apache County in the Arizona Territory.

1884 – Mark Twain publishes “Huckleberry Finn.”

1862 – The USS Red Rover is commissioned by the United States Navy as a hospital ship and takes aboard the first women to serve as nurses aboard a navy ship. They were Sisters of the Order of the Holy Cross.

1864 – The family of Nicolas P. Earp arrives in San Bernardino, California.  His children include Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil.

1852 – Future general George Crook graduates near the bottom of his class at West Point.

1883 – The Gambler Newt Boyce cut two men with a knife in a saloon fight with Caldwell, Kansas.  Marshal Henry Brown and Ben Wheeler arrested him for it and threw him in jail.