Enter Now! It’s a double giveaway. 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.
Legendary lawman and sportswriter Bat Masterson once referred to his well-known colleague Bill Tilghman as “the finest among us all.” Marshall Tilghman and Sheriff Bat Masterson were two members of the “most intrepid posse” of the Old West, a group of policemen who in 1878, tracked down the killer of a popular songstress named Dora Hand.
William Matthew Tilghman, Jr.’s drive to legitimately right a wrong began at an early. He was born on the 4th of July 1854 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. His father was a soldier turned farmer and his mother was a homemaker. Bill spent his early childhood in the heart of the Sioux Indian territory in Minnesota. Grazed by and arrow when he was a baby, he was raised to respect Native American and protect his family from tribes that felt they had been unfairly treated by the government. Bill was one of six children. He mother insisted he had been “born to a life of danger.”
In 1859 his family moved to a homestead near Atkinson, Kansas. While Bill’s father and oldest brother were fighting in the Civil War, he worked the farm and hunted game. One of the most significant events occurred when he was twelve years old while returning home from a blackberry hunt. His hero Bill Hickok rode up beside him and asked if he had seen a man ride through with a team of mules and a wagon.
To learn more about Bill Tilghman and others like him 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.
