Ran across this paper by Robert J. “Bob” Stahl at Arizona State
University. Fun Old West trivia. Highlight mine.
Since the 1920s, professional and lay historians as well as
supporters of the various Billy, the
Kid impostors have differed widely in the purposes or meanings of the March 24,
1882 poster that read:
NOTICE!
TO THIEVES,
THUGS, FAKIRS AND BUNKO-STEERERS,
Among Whom
Are
J. J. Harlan alias “Off Wheeler;”
Saw Dust Charlie, Wm. Hedges, Billy,
the Kid, Billy Mullin, Little Jack, The Cuter,
Pockmarked Kid and about
Twenty Others:
If Found within the Limits of this City
after TEN O’CLOCK P.M. this Night, you will be Invited to attend a GRAND
NECKTIE PARTY,
The Expense of which will be borne by
100 Substantial Citizens.
Las Vegas, March 24th, 1882
Those who
believe that Billy, the Kid, Bonney
was not killed by Pat Garrett at about 12:20 a.m. on Friday, July 15, 1881 in
Pete Maxwell’s bedroom use this poster as evidence that Billy
Bonney was still alive, lest why would 100 “substantial citizens” of Las Vegas,
NM, a town where Billy was well
known, want him out of town before 10 p.m. the evening of March 24, 1882. This
poster as dated is often one of their primary pieces of ‘hard’ evidence that Billy was alive and known by prominent people to be
alive eight months after his reported
death in Fort Sumner. Meanwhile, individuals convinced
Billy Bonney was killed by Garrett
have had difficulty coming up with a convincing reason why this poster would
even mention a “Billy, the Kid,” as
it made no sense to state that a man, eight months dead and buried 125 miles
away, would be ordered to leave the town. Consequently, they searched for a plausible
other ‘Billy, the Kid,’ who was or
who might have been in and around Las
Vegas in March 1882.
Some contend it was Billy, “the Kid” Wilson, a former member of Bonney’s
cow-boy outlaw group. However, this is a stretch because Wilson
had been in a Santa Fe
jail since late December 1880 ... Others suggest the Billy
referred to was “Billy, the Kid,”
Claiborne, of Tombstone
fame. However, Tombstone and Cochise County
newspapers report Claiborne as being in and around the county the entire spring
of 1882. So there is no evidence that Claiborne was the “Billy”
referred to in the poster. A few have even suggested that the creators of the
poster referred to the remains of Billy
Bonney that had allegedly been snatched from Billy’s
original Fort Sumner grave in late July 1881 and brought to Las Vegas to be
assembled as a skeleton in one or more doctors’ offices. The most desperate
interpreters of this poster have either printed up a version of the poster with
the “1882” replaced by “1881” or argued that the “1882” date on the poster was
a misprint, because Billy, the Kid
was alive in 1881 but not in 1882. However, this made no sense because Billy Bonney was in a Mesilla jail through March
1881. The one thing that these people have in common is the conviction that a
particular “Billy, the Kid” had
indeed been in and around Las Vegas for at least a few days or weeks as well as
on the day the poster was nailed on street posts and displayed in Las Vegas
businesses.
Actually,
none of these explanations is accurate.
In July
1926, James A. Carruth, owner of a printing business in Las
Vegas from the mid-1870s on past 1900; owner and editor of the
short-lived Las Vegas Free Press;
and, after a short time in California, owner
of a highly successful printing business in Santa Fe,
responded to recent rumors about Billy,
the Kid being alive in Texas.
He wrote the following undated letter to the Editor printed under the title, “Several Billy
The Kids,” in the July 7th issue of the Santa Fe New Mexican:1
Editor New Mexican:
I notice in
an article the other day you state that the date given in the poster printed at
Las Vegas and
now in the rooms of the First National bank, mentioned “Billy
the Kid,” though he had been dead a year or so. I printed that poster, and the Billy the Kid mentioned was an imitation of the
genuine one. There were several in different towns in New
Mexico, and probably the one mentioned by the El Paso writer was one of these.
The poster
was written by Col. J. A. Lockhart, who had not long previously “presided” at a
meeting which disposed of a tough, who died on a telegraph pole, and the
parties mentioned in the poster did not care to argue any point with the
colonel. A party who was going down-town, along Railroad avenue, that night,
was stopped by a couple of men with six-shooters on, who asked what he wanted
on that street that night, and told him he had better go back up-town. He did
so, and went into a restaurant just as a party came in the back door with a
suspicious red line around his neck, and said: “Charlie, give me something to
eat quick.” Charlie asked him what was the matter with his neck, and he said a
crowd of fellows had put a rope around him and hauled him up on a telegraph
pole, let him down, and gave him 10 minutes to get out of town, but “I had
nothing to eat since breakfast and cannot go without eating.” So Charlie gave
him a lunch to go on.
A SANDY MARSHAL
Colonel
Lockhart was a small, wiry man, and full of grit. A party here tells me that he
used to be marshal right after the war at Fort
Smith, and one time the judge told him to take a posse
of 25 men and go out and bring in a man who had been indicted on a very serious
charge. He was an ex-Confederate, and Lockhart had to go right into a big
settlement of 1,400 or more Confederates, and he went and got his man.2
The
gentleman who told me this says that he once “aided and abetted” the James
brothers in their nefarious work to the extent of $75 and a $200 gold watch.
This contribution was not voluntary on his part, but at the request of the
James brothers, who had Colt & Co. as attorneys, and Colt & Co. under
those conditions were powerful attorneys.
Speaking of
hanging bees, another one took place in Las Vegas after wards when a crowd went
and took a party out of the east side lockup and went over and started to hang
him on a pole right under the window of the office of the district attorney,
who came up and said: “For God’s sake, boys, don’t hang him here. There’s a
much better pole in the next block. So the boys very kindly took the
“candidate” to the better pole, where he was duly hanged.
J.
A. CARRUTH.
Carruth
made it clear that (a) Col. Lockhart created the wording for the poster, (b)
Carruth and his print shop designed, type-set and printed the poster; (c)
Lockhart and Carruth were convinced that the ‘real’ Billy,
the Kid, Bonney had been dead for about a year; (d) the poster in no way
referred to the Billy Bonney who was
dead; and (e) the Billy mentioned
referred to any and all of the living Williams and Billys
in New Mexico who had picked up or who were thinking of picking up the nickname
“the Kid.” His letter comes as close to stating the actual purposes and
meanings of the poster as we are likely to get.
