Billy the Kid born
The infamous Western outlaw known as Billy the Kid is born in a poor Irish neighborhood on New York Citys East Side.Before he was shot dead at age 21 Billy reputedly killed 27 people in the American West.Billy the Kid called himself William H.Bonney but his original name was probably Henry McCarty.
Bonney was his mother Catherines maiden name and William was the first name of his mothers longtime companionWilliam Antrinwho acted as Billys father after his biological father disappeared.Around 1865 Billy and his brother traveled west to Indiana with their mother and Antrin and by 1870 the group was in Wichita Kansas.They soon moved farther west down the cattle trails and in 1873 a legally married Catherine and William Antrin appeared on record in New Mexico territory.
In 1874 Billys mother died of lung cancer in Silver City.Billy soon left his brother and stepfather and took off into the New Mexico sagebrush.He worked as a ranch hand and in 1876 supposedly killed his first men a group of reservation Apache Indians in the Guadalupe Mountains.According to legend it was not long before Billy killed another man a blacksmith in Camp Grant Arizona.
Billy the Kid as people began calling him next found work as a rancher and bodyguard for John Tunstall a English-born rancher who operated out of Lincoln New Mexico.When members of a rival cattle gang killed Tunstall in 1878 Billy became involved in the so-called Lincoln County War.Enraged at Tunstalls murder Billy became a leader of a vigilante posse of regulators sent to arrest the killers.No arrests were made however.
Two of the murderers were shot dead by Billys posse and a worsening blood feud soon escalated into all-out warfare.After Billys gang shot dead Lincoln Sheriff Bill Brady who had sanctioned Tunstalls murder Billys enemies conspired with the territorial authorities to do away with the regulators.In July 1878 the rival gang surrounded the house where Billy and his gang were staying just outside of town.The siege stretched on for five days and a U.S.
Army squadron from nearby Fort Stanton was called in.Still Billy and his gang refused to surrender.Suddenly the regulators made a mass escape and Billy and several of the other regulators miraculously managed to shoot their way out of town.After more than two years on the run Billy was arrested by Lincoln Sheriff Pat Garrett a man Billy had previously befriended before Garrett became a lawman.
In April 1881 Billy was found guilty of the murder of Sheriff Brady and was sentenced to hang.On April 28 two weeks before his scheduled execution Billy wrested a gun from one of his jailers and shot him and another deputy dead in a daring escape that received considerable national attention.On the night of July 14 1881 Garrett finally tracked Billy down at a ranch near Fort Sumner New Mexico.He gained access to the house where Billy was visiting a girlfriend and then surprised him in the dark.
Before the outlaw could offer resistance Garret fired a bullet into his chest.Billy the Kid was dead at age 21.
