The Ritzville Community Theatre Presents |
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Black Bart (back, left), Virgil Walter Earp, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, John Henry "Doc" Holliday, Big Nose Kate (front, left), Kitty Leroy and Calamity Jane |
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Black Bart
(It seems that Black Bart has left the territory and hasn't been seen in ages. We've sent a scout to find him for this year's rendezvous, but he's keeping a low profile.)
Black Bart’s real name was Charles Bolles. He was known as the “Gentleman Bandit” who robbed stagecoaches in Northern California and Southern Oregon during the 1870s and 1880s. His primary target was the Wells Fargo Bank and he often refused the valuables of passengers on the stagecoaches he robbed saying, “My gripe is with the Wells Fargo company.”
Bolles got his name, Black Bart, from a fictional character in a dime novel series that was popular at the time. He was always polite during his robberies and eventually began leaving poems at the site of his crimes. Black Bart was very successful and made off with thousands of dollars a year. During his last robbery in 1883, he was forced to flee the scene and left several personal items behind. These items, including a laundry mark on a handkerchief, led investigators to his residence in San Francisco and his eventual arrest. Again he was very polite during his arrest.
He spent four years of a six-year sentence in San Quentin Prison. He was released early due to good behavior and was never heard from again. |
Virgil Walter Earp
Virgil Earp was involved in law enforcement, one way or another, most of his life. He also fought in the Civil war for three years. During his lifetime, Virgil farmed, drove a stagecoach, drove a mail route, was a prospector and was always involved with marshals, sheriffs and constables in one capacity or another. When he and wife Allie lived in Prescott, Ariz., prior to moving to Tombstone, he worked occasionally in law enforcement.
When the Marshal was killed in Tombstone, the city council appointed Virgil as city marshal on Oct. 30, 1880. At the next election, he became the marshal from June 18, 1881 until Oct. 29, 1881. Three days after the OK Corral gunfight Virgil and his deputy, Wyatt, resigned.
Virgil Earp was a Deputy United State’s Marshal and Tombstone Police Chief when the gunfight at OK Corral occurred, making him the primary law enforcement officer in the incident. It was Virgil who was disgusted with Sheriff Behan’s weakness and constant protection of the “cowboys” and it was Virgil who yelled at them to put their hands in the air, not Wyatt. Virgil wanted to avoid a gunfight if at all possible. During the gunfight, Virgil was shot in the leg.
On Dec. 28, 1881, he was ambushed with a shotgun, leaving his left arm permanently crippled.
That didn’t stop Virgil. He and Allie moved to Colton, Calif., where he became the first marshal. In 1900, he was nominated to run for sheriff of Yavapai County in Arizona on the Republican ticket but due to poor health he dropped out of the race. Virgil Walter Earp was working as a deputy sheriff in Esmaralda County, Nevada, when he died of pneumonia on Oct. 19, 1905. |
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp
In 1864, Wyatt moved from Illinois with his parents to Colton, Calif., where he worked on the railroad and as a teamster. He returned east in 1870 and married. After the sudden death of his new bride, Wyatt became a buffalo hunter, stagecoach driver and in 1875 a policeman in Wichita, Kan. In 1876, he moved to Dodge City and became a dealer at the Long Branch Saloon and assistant marshal. Here, he met his lifelong friends Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday.
In 1878, Wyatt, with his second wife, traveled to New Mexico and California and worked as a Wells Fargo agent. In 1879 he joined his brothers in Tombstone, Ariz. He acquired the gambling concession at the Oriental Saloon and met his third wife, Josie. Virgil became town marshal. Morgan also joined the police department.
On Oct. 26, 1881, a feud between the Earps and Clantons culminated in the gunfight at the OK Corral. Morgan and Virgil were wounded. Three of the Clanton gang were killed but two escaped.
In March, 1882, after Morgan was gunned down by unknown assassins, Wyatt, Warren and friends embarked on a vendetta in which all four suspects were eventually killed. Accused of these murders, Wyatt and Josie fled to Colorado. They traveled to several western mining camps including Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, San Diego, Calif., Nome, Alaska, and Tonopah, Nev. Wyatt gambled and invested in real estate, saloons and mining. In 1906 he discovered several veins of gold and copper near Vidal, Calif.
On Jan. 13, 1929, Wyatt Earp died in Los Angeles. Cowboy actors Tom Mix and William S. Hart were among his pallbearers. Wyatt’s ashes were buried in Josie’s family plot just south of San Francisco. When Josie died at age 75, she was buried beside him. |
John Henry "Doc" Holliday
John Henry Holliday was born in Griffin, Georgia, on Aug. 14, 1851. In 1866, his family relocated to Valdosta, Georgia. There he attended the Valdosta Institute where he received a strong classical secondary education. On March 1, 1872, John Henry received the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. It was at dental school that he was infected with tuberculosis, “consumption” as it is known. After being diagnosed with tuberculosis, he moved his practice from Atlanta, Georgia, to the dryer climate in Dallas, Texas.
In Dallas, John Henry almost completely gave up his practice of dentistry. The coughing he did because of the tuberculosis was offensive to his patients. His only relief from the coughing was the large amounts of whisky he consumed.
John Henry found that he had a talent for gambling and so he became a gambler. After he was convicted of “gaming,” as gambling was illegal in Dallas, John Henry decided to tour the mining “boom towns” where gambling was both legal and lucrative. At times he was urged to move on because of “disagreements” that ended in gunfire.
In Fort Griffin, Texas, John Henry met two individuals who became a big part of his life. He met “Big Nose Kate” and they began their longtime involvement when she helped him escape a lynch mob. He also met Wyatt Earp and their friendship was cemented when John Henry defended Wyatt in Dodge City, Kansas, from several cowboys out to kill him. Their most famous gunfight together was at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, where Kate and John Henry ended their relationship.
John Henry then entered a sanitarium in Glenwood Springs, Colorado at 36 years old and at one time he was told by the doctor that his prospects of ever leaving there weren’t good. He will always be remembered for the use of the phrase, “I’ll be your Huckleberry.” |
Big Nose Kate
Mary Katherine Harony was born in Pest (Budapest), Hungary on Nov. 7, 1850, the oldest child of a wealthy physician who gave her an education befitting an aristocrat’s daughter; she was literate and spoke several languages, including Hungarian, French, Spanish and English. In 1862, Harony’s father traveled to Mexico to accept a position as personal surgeon to Maximilian of Mexico but his government crumbled in 1865, so Harony moved the family to Davenport, Iowa. That same year, Mary lost both parents to unknown causes, and she and her siblings placed in a foster home. Mr. Otto Smith was, at first, very kind, but one day alone with him in his barn changed that forever. He raped Mary; her hand touched upon an ax and she thought she had killed him so she ran away, and was on the move most of her life.
The love of her life was John Henry “Doc” Holliday. Theirs was a stormy relationship at best. But Mary would never give up on him; she defended him, freed him, nursed him and loved him with all her heart until the day he died from his battle with tuberculosis. Mary went on without him and lived to almost 90 years of age, which was quite surprising (even to her!), for the rip-roarin’, hard-drinkin’, gun-slingin’ life of a prostitute that she had led. Some might ask, “How did she get that nickname of “Big Nose Kate?” Her nose actually was proportioned normally; her facial features were quite comely, she was told. It seemed that she earned that moniker from her reputation of poking her nose into everyone’s business, in other words, she admitted she was a snoop! |
Kitty Leroy
Kitty was a gambler, saloon owner, prostitute, trick shooter and alluring personality. She was born in Michigan. By age 10 she was dancing professionally and at 14 she was performing in dance halls and saloons. She developed shooting skills that few could match, including shooting apples off people’s heads.
A beautiful young woman, she first married at 15, but ended shortly as she was promiscuous and difficult to tame. She ventured west settling in Dallas, Texas. By age 20, she’d married a second time and was one of the most popular dancing attractions in town. As a skilled gambler she soon gave up dancing to work as a faro dealer. She became known for dressing in men’s clothing and as a gypsy.
On the way to California, she left her second husband for another man, marrying for a third time. However, this marriage was extremely short-lived. The two had an argument, during which she attacked him. He refused to hit her because she was a woman so she changed into men’s clothing and challenged him again. She drew her gun, he did not, and she shot him.
Kitty made her way to Deadwood, S.D., in 1876 on the same wagon train as Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. There, she worked as a prostitute. Eventually, she opened the Mint Gambling Saloon and married a fourth husband, a German prospector. When his money ran out, she hit him with a bottle and threw him out, ending the relationship.
Her saloon was successful. In addition to the gambling income, Leroy occasionally worked as a prostitute. On June 11, 1877, Leroy married for the fifth time, to prospector and gambler Samuel R. Curley. Curley was extremely jealous of Kitty’s numerous affairs. On Dec. 7, 1878, Curley shot and killed 28-year-old Leroy in the Lone Star Saloon, then turned the gun on himself. The pair was laid in state in front of the saloon the next day, then buried together. |
Calamity Jane
Martha Jane Cannary, known as Calamity Jane, was a notorious American frontier woman in the days of the Wild West. As unconventional and wild as the territory she roamed, she has become a legend.
Jane Cannary was born May 1, 1852, at Princeton, Mo. Jane learned to be a teamster and to snap 30-foot bullwhackers. In 1870, she joined General George Armstrong Custer as a scout at Fort Russell, Wyoming, donning the uniform of a soldier. She also hired out as a mule skinner, bullwhacker and railroad worker. “Calamity” became part of her name and she was proud of it. She was adept at using a six-shooter. In June 1876, she worked as a Pony Express rider carrying the U.S. mail between Deadwood and Custer, a distance of 50 miles, over one of the roughest trails in the Black Hills country.
In Deadwood, Dakota Territory, in 1876 Calamity found a home. It was an outlaw town, so her escapades and drinking bouts did not seem out of place. Calamity Jane left Deadwood in 1880 and drifted around the Dakotas and Montana. In 1900, Calamity appeared briefly at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., as a Western attraction, but she was homesick for the West and soon went back. In poor health in July 1903, she arrived at the Calloway Hotel in Terry, near Deadwood, where she died on August 1 or 2. She was buried next to Wild Bill Hickok. |
