Category: Outlaws
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Wild West Wednesday – Wild Bill Hickok and Gambler Davis Tutt Engaged in First Recorded Gunfight in the Old West
Image: Wild Bill Hickok threatens the friends of Davis Tutt after defeating Tutt in a duel. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1867. (Public Domain) On July 21, 1865, Wild Bill Hickok and gambler Davis Tutt engaged in a gunfight in the town square of Springfield, Missouri. It is the first time in the recorded history…
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Wild West Wednesday – Outlaw William “Bill” Doolin
Image: William “Bill” Doolin (Public Domain) William Doolin was an American outlaw and founder of the Wild Bunch, sometimes called the Doolin- Dalton Gang. Like the earlier Dalton Gang alone, it concentrated on robbing banks, trains, and stagecoaches in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and Indiana, during the 1890s. Bill Doolin was born in 1858 in Johnson…
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On This Day in History, the Notorious Hired Killer Tom Horn is Executed for Murdering Willie Nickell, the 14-year-Old Son of a Wyoming Sheep Rancher. November 20, 1903.
Image: Tom Horn braiding a rope in the Laramie County jail office in Cheyenne, 1902. (Public Domain) Several historians have subsequently doubted whether Horn murdered the boy, indicating that the jury condemned him merely because of an intoxicated admission of guilt that Horn purportedly made to a deputy sheriff. Also, the jury did not give sufficient…
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Wild West Wednesday – “Buckskin” Frank Leslie
Image: Nashville Franklin “Buckskin Frank” Leslie, a lawman, U.S. Army scout, gambler, and an outlaw of the American Old West. He assisted Wyatt and Warren Earp in their search for those they held responsible for maiming Virgil Earp and assassinating Morgan Earp. 1881. (Public Domain) “Buckskin” Frank Leslie was a U.S. Army scout, gambler, bartender,…
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Wild West Wednesdays – Outlaw Milt Yarberry
Image: Milt Yarberry shortly before his hanging, while shackled to his chair at the prison in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory. (Public Domain) People change their names for many reasons. In the old West, it was just as likely that a person was attempting to run away from something because of something to hide or…
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Wild West Wednesday – Laura Bullion: The Thorny Rose of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch Gang
Image: Laura Bullion was one of five women who spent time with Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch outside of Fannie Porter’s brothel. (Public Domain) Laura Bullion was an outlaw in the American Old West. In the 1890s, she was a member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch gang; her associates were fellow outlaws, including the Sundance Kid,…
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Wild West Wednesday: Outlaw Ben Thompson and the Vaudeville Theater Ambush. March 11, 1884.
Image: Ben Thompson, 1879. (Public Domain) “I always make it a rule to let the other fellow fire first. If a man wants to fight, I argue the question with him and try to show him how foolish it would be. If he can’t be dissuaded, why then the fun begins, but I always let…
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Wild West Wednesday – Outlaw Dirty Dave Rudabaugh
Image: Dave Rudabaugh (Public Domain) Nicknamed “Dirty Dave” because he scarcely bathed and wore filthy clothes, Dave Rudabaugh was a cowboy, outlaw, and gunfighter in the American Old West. Dave Rudabaugh was born on July 14, 1854, and was a young boy living in his birth state of Illinois when his father was killed during the…
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Brothers John and Simeon Reno and Frank Sparkes Hold the First Train Robbery in United States History, Stealing $16,000 From an Ohio and Mississippi Railroad Train in Jackson County, Indiana. October 6, 1866.
Image: The Reno Gang 1860s. (Public Domain) On this day in history, October 6, 1866, brothers John and Simeon Reno and Frank Sparkes hold the first train robbery in United States history, stealing $16,000 from an Ohio and Mississippi railroad train in Jackson County, Indiana. The Reno brothers’ influence on criminal history was to halt…
History Daily With Francis Chappell Black 