1889 is the crossroads where the descendants, living persons and ancestors of previous, current and future influencers meet on the chronological timeline of earth’s history.
Note: Wikipedia is the source the Catholic Bard quotes directly for all the bio descriptions read in these articles.
This article is part of a series of Notable People Alive In 1889
The old west was a gateway to the mysterious unknown.
It was a place where God’s wonder was displayed in the land.
It was a place where adventure, excitement and danger.
It was a place where cowboys were Home on the Range.
Native Americans roamed the lands they lived on for centuries.
Criminals roamed the country looking for stagecoaches and trains to rob.
These outlaws of the old west existed at the same time many future Mafia members were being born.
They were being born at the same time as the participants in 19th century True Crime were alive committing shocking acts
we still poder to this day.
These were the Cowboys and Outlaws alive in 1889.
Born Before 1800’s
Tabby-To-Kwanah
(c. 1789 – 1898)
He was the leader of Timpanogos group of Native Americans when they were displaced from their homeland near Utah Lake, to the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation several hundred miles to the east in modern-day Utah.
Maybe Born in 1800’s
Washakie
(c.1804 /1810 – February 20, 1900)
He was a prominent leader of the Shoshone people during the mid-19th century. He was first mentioned in 1840 in the written record of the American fur trapper, Osborne Russell. In 1851, at the urging of trapper Jim Bridger, Washakie led a band of Shoshones to the council meetings of the Treaty of Fort Laramie. Essentially from that time until his death, he was considered the head of the Eastern Shoshones by the representatives of the United States government. In 1979, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
Born in 1800’s
Lorenzo Dow Earp
(November 20, 1809-December 4, 1893)
He is the older brother of Nicholas Porter Earp, father of lawman Wyatt Earp.
Born in 1810’s
Thomas Starr
(c. 1813–1890)
He was a Cherokee in the American West, who was declared an outlaw by his tribe in an internal conflict over treaties with the United States government. He was also involved in running whiskey into Indian Territory and rustling stock. Starr was the grandfather of Henry Starr (December 2, 1873 – February 22, 1921) and father in-law to Belle Starr, through her marriage to Sam Starr.

Nicholas Porter Earp
(September 6, 1813 – February 12, 1907)
He was the father of well-known Western lawmen Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan, and their lesser-known brothers James, Newton and Warren Earp. He was a justice of the peace, a farmer, cooper, constable, bootlegger, wagon-master, and teacher.
Andrew Blackbird
(c. 1814 – 17 September 1908)
Also known as Makade-binesi (“Black Hawk”) , He was an Odawa (Ottawa) tribe leader and historian. He was author of the 1887 book, History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan.
Born in 1820’s
Liver-Eating Johnson
(July 1, 1824 – January 21, 1900)
He was a mountain man of the American Old West.
Randolph “Randall” or “Ole Ran’l” McCoy
(October 30, 1825 – March 28, 1914)
He was the patriarch of the McCoy clan involved in the infamous American Hatfield–McCoy feud. He was the fourth of thirteen children born to Daniel McCoy and Margaret Taylor McCoy and lived mostly on the Kentucky side of Tug Fork, a tributary of the Big Sandy River.
During the almost thirty-year feud with the Hatfield clan under their patriarch Devil Anse Hatfield, Randolph would lose five of his children to the violence.
Roy Bean
(c. 1825 – March 16, 1903)
He was an American saloon-keeper and Justice of the Peace in Val Verde County, Texas, who called himself “The Only Law West of the Pecos“. According to legend, he held court in his saloon along the Rio Grande on a desolate stretch of the Chihuahuan Desert of southwest Texas. After his death, fictional Western films and books cast him as a hanging judge, although he is known to have sentenced only two men to hang, one of whom escaped.
Wild Bill Hickok’s Wife
Agnes Lake Mersman Thatcher
(1826-1907)
She was the wife of
Wild Bill Hickok
(May 27, 1837 – August 2, 1876)
James Butler Hickok (was a folk hero of the American Old West known for his life on the frontier as a soldier, scout, lawman, cattle rustler, gunslinger, gambler, showman, and actor, and for his involvement in many famous gunfights. He earned a great deal of notoriety in his own time, much of it bolstered by the many outlandish and often fabricated tales he told about himself. Some contemporaneous reports of his exploits are known to be fictitious, but they remain the basis of much of his fame and reputation.
Geronimo
(June 16, 1829 – February 17, 1909)
He was a military leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Ndendahe Apache people. From 1850 to 1886, Geronimo joined with members of three other Central Apache bands – the Tchihende, the Tsokanende (called Chiricahua by Americans) and the Nednhi – to carry out numerous raids, as well as fight against Mexican and U.S. military campaigns in the northern Mexico states of Chihuahua and Sonora and in the southwestern American territories of New Mexico and Arizona.
Standing Bear
(c. 1829–1908)
He was a Ponca chief and Native American civil rights leader who successfully argued in U.S. District Court in 1879 in Omaha that Native Americans are “persons within the meaning of the law” and have the right of habeas corpus, thus becoming the first Native American judicially granted civil rights under American law. His first wife Zazette Primeau (Primo), daughter of Lone Chief (also known as Antoine Primeau), mother of Prairie Flower and Bear Shield, was also a signatory on the 1879 writ that initiated the famous court case.
Born in 1830’s
Sitting Bull
(1831–1837 – December 15, 1890)
He was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. He defeated General George Custer in battle and also was a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
Sitting Bull was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.
Carrie Brown (murder victim)
(c. 1834 – April 24, 1891)
She was a New York City prostitute who was murdered and mutilated in a lodging house. She is occasionally mentioned as an alleged victim of Jack the Ripper. Although known to use numerous aliases, a common practice in her occupation, she supposedly won her nickname of Shakespeare for her habit of quoting William Shakespeare during drinking games. She has often been referred to as Old Shakespeare in later news articles and books and contemporaneous newspapers.

Cesare Lombroso
(June 6, 1886 – June 14, 1933)
He was an Italian eugenicist, criminologist, phrenologist, physician, and founder of the Italian school of criminology. He is considered the founder of modern criminal anthropology by changing the Western notions of individual responsibility.
Lombroso rejected the established classical school, which held that crime was a characteristic trait of human nature. Instead, using concepts drawn from physiognomy, degeneration theory, psychiatry, and Social Darwinism, Lombroso’s theory of anthropological criminology essentially stated that criminality was inherited, and that someone “born criminal” could be identified by physical (congenital) defects, which confirmed a criminal as savage or atavistic.
Gabriel Dumont (Métis leader)
(1837–1906)
He was a Métis political figure best known for being a prominent leader of the Métis people. Dumont was well known for his movements within the North-West Rebellion at the battles of Batoche, Fish Creek, and Duck Lake as well as for his role in the signing of treaties with the Blackfoot tribe, the traditional main enemy of the Métis.
Bass Reeves
(July 1838 – January 12, 1910)
He was a runaway slave, gunfighter, farmer, scout, tracker, railroad agent and deputy U.S. Marshal. He spoke and understood the languages of several Native American tribes including Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Creek. Bass was one of the first African-American Deputy U.S. Marshals west of the Mississippi River, mostly working in the deadly Indian Territory. The region was saturated with horse thieves, cattle rustlers, gunslingers, bandits, bootleggers, swindlers, and murderers. Reeves made more than 3,000 to 4,000 arrests in his lifetime, killing twenty men in the line of duty.
Bass is one possible inspiration for the Lone Ranger, the travelling hero of western radio, TV and films; historian Art T. Burton says “Bass Reeves is the closest person to resemble the Lone Ranger” citing similarities including Reeves working with Native American partners and handed out souvenir silver dollars.
Black Bart’s Wife
Black Bart (outlaw)
(b. c. 1829; d. after February 28, 1888)
Also known as Charles E. Boles, was an American outlaw noted for the poetic messages he left behind after two of his robberies. Often called Charley by his friends, he was also known as Charles (or C.E.) Bolton. Considered a gentleman bandit with a reputation for style and sophistication, he was one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers to operate in and around Northern California and Southern Oregon during the 1870s and 1880s.
His wife was
Mary Elizabeth Boles (Johnson)
(1838-1896)
William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield
(September 9, 1839 – January 6, 1921),
He was an American timber merchant and Civil War veteran who led the West Virginian Hatfield family during the Hatfield–McCoy feud.
Born in 1840’s
Custer’s Wife
George Armstrong Custer
(December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876)
He was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars.
His wife was
Elizabeth Bacon Custer
(April 8, 1842 – April 4, 1933)
She was an American author and public speaker who was the wife of Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer, United States Army. She spent most of their twelve-year marriage in relative proximity to him despite his numerous military campaigns in the American Civil War and subsequent postings on the Great Plains as a commanding officer in the United States Cavalry.
Jessie James’ Brother
Frank James
(January 10, 1843 – February 18, 1915)
He was a Confederate soldier and guerrilla; in the post-Civil War period, he was an outlaw. Frank was also part of the James–Younger Gang.
He was the older brother of outlaw
Jesse James
(September 5, 1847 – April 3, 1882)
He was an American outlaw, bank and train robber, guerrilla and leader of the James–Younger Gang. Raised in the “Little Dixie” area of Missouri, James and his family maintained strong Southern sympathies. He and his brother Frank James joined pro-Confederate guerrillas known as “bushwhackers” operating in Missouri and Kansas during the American Civil War. As followers of William Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson, they were accused of committing atrocities against Union soldiers and civilian abolitionists, including the Centralia Massacre in 1864.
After the war, as members of various gangs of outlaws, Jesse and Frank robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains across the Midwest, gaining national fame and often popular sympathy despite the brutality of their crimes. The James brothers were most active as members of their own gang from about 1866 until 1876, when as a result of their attempted robbery of a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, several members of the gang were captured or killed. They continued in crime for several years afterward, recruiting new members, but came under increasing pressure from law enforcement seeking to bring them to justice. On April 3, 1882, Jesse James was shot and killed by Robert Ford, a new recruit to the gang who hoped to collect a reward on James’s head and a promised amnesty for his previous crimes. Already a celebrity in life, James became a legendary figure of the Wild West after his death.

Popular portrayals of James as an embodiment of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, are a case of romantic revisionism as there is no evidence his gang shared any loot from their robberies with anyone outside their network. Scholars and historians have characterized James as one of many criminals inspired by the regional insurgencies of ex-Confederates following the Civil War, rather than as a manifestation of alleged economic justice or of frontier lawlessness. James continues to be one of the most famous figures from the era, and his life has been dramatized and memorialized numerous times.
Crazy Horse’s Wife
Crazy Horse
(c. 1840 – September 5, 1877)
He was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band in the 19th century. He took up arms against the United States federal government to fight against encroachment by White American settlers on Native American territory and to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people. His participation in several famous battles of the Black Hills War on the northern Great Plains, among them the Fetterman Fight in 1866, in which he acted as a decoy, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, in which he led a war party to victory, earned him great respect from both his enemies and his own people.

His wife was
Black Shawl
(1844 – 1927)
She married Crazy Horse, 1871 and was his second wife. She was a member of the Oglala Lakota and relative of Spotted Tail and the sister of Red Feather.
Robert “Pony Bob” Haslam
(January 1840 – February 29, 1912)
He was a Pony Express rider in the American Old West. He came to the United States as a teenager and was hired by Bolivar Roberts, helped build the stations, and was assigned the run from Friday’s Station (State Line) to Buckland Station near Fort Churchill, 75 miles to the east. Perhaps his greatest ride, 120 miles in 8 hours and 20 minutes while wounded, was an important contribution to the fastest trip ever made by the Pony Express. The message carried was Abraham Lincoln‘s Inaugural Address. After the Pony Express, Haslam returned as an employee of Wells, Fargo & Company, which operated its own enterprise between San Francisco and Virginia City. He later served as a Deputy United States Marshall in Salt Lake City. In his final years he worked in the Hotel Congress in Chicago. He made a personal business card with a sketch of himself as a Pony Express rider at the age of twenty and entertained guests with stories of his adventures.
James McParland
(March 22, 1844 – May 18, 1919)
He was an American private detective and Pinkerton agent.
McParland arrived in New York in 1867. He worked as a laborer, policeman and then in Chicago as a liquor store owner until the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed his business. He then became a private detective and labor spy, noted for his success against coal mining labor organizations in Pennsylvania.
Pinkerton (detective agency)
was founded by
Allan Pinkerton
(August 21, 1819– July 1, 1884)
He was a Scottish-American cooper, abolitionist, detective, and spy. He claims to have foiled a plot in 1861 to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln.

John Surratt
(April 13, 1844 – April 21, 1916)
He was an American Confederate spy who was accused of plotting with John Wilkes Booth to kidnap U.S. President Abraham Lincoln; he was also suspected of involvement in the Abraham Lincoln assassination. His mother, Mary Surratt, was convicted of conspiracy by a military tribunal and hanged; she owned the boarding house that the conspirators used as a safe house and to plot the scheme.
He eluded arrest following the assassination by fleeing to Canada and then to Europe. He thus avoided the fate of the other conspirators, who were hanged. He served briefly as a Pontifical Zouave but was recognized and arrested. He escaped to Egypt but was eventually arrested and extradited. By the time of his trial, the statute of limitations had expired on most of the potential charges. He was tried in civilian court in 1867 in Washington D.C. and was not convicted due to a hung jury. He was never tried again.
Jerome Caminada
(1844 – March 1914)
He was a 19th-century police officer in Manchester, England. Caminada served with the police between 1868 and 1899, and has been called Manchester’s Sherlock Holmes. In 1897 he became the city’s first CID superintendent. His most famous case was the Manchester Cab Murder of 1889, in which he discovered and brought the initially unknown perpetrator to trial and conviction only three weeks after the murder.
John Ware (cowboy)
(c. 1845 – 11 September 1905)
He was a Canadian cowboy who was influential in the early years of the burgeoning ranching industry in Southern Alberta. Remembered for his excellent horsemanship, he was among the first ranchers in Alberta, arriving in 1882 on a cattle drive from the United States and settling to ranch until his death in 1905.
Richard Clarke
(December 15, 1845 – May 5, 1930)
He was born in Yorkshire, England, was a United States frontiersman, Pony Express rider, actor, and armed forces member who was widely considered by the American public to be the original inspiration for Deadwood Dick.
During his career, Clarke fought alongside George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn against the combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples. In his work with the Pony Express, Clarke often had to defend himself, others, and his cargo from Sioux raiders. Clarke lived long enough to see his country make peace with the Sioux, and met President Calvin Coolidge on the day the latter became an honorary member of the Sioux people. He died in the town in which he spent much of his life: Deadwood, South Dakota.
Belle Starr
(February 5, 1848 – February 3, 1889)
She was an American outlaw who gained national notoriety after her violent death.
She associated with the James–Younger Gang and other outlaws. She was convicted of horse theft in 1883. She was fatally shot in 1889 in a case that is still officially unsolved. Her story was popularized by Richard K. Fox — editor and publisher of the National Police Gazette — and she later became a popular character in television and films.
Frank Dalton
(March 8, 1848(?) – August 15, 1951)
He was an American impostor and centenarian who drew notice late in life by successively claiming to be two long-dead famous Western historical figures, lawman Frank Dalton (June 8, 1859 – November 27, 1887) and outlaw Jesse James.

Wyatt Earp
(March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929)
He was an American lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone. Earp was involved in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which lawmen killed three outlaw Cochise County Cowboys.
He was one of the judges at the county fair horse races held in Escondido, California, in 1889.
Big Nose Kate
(November 7, 1849 – November 2, 1940)
She was a Hungarian-born American outlaw, gambler, prostitute and longtime companion and common-law wife of Old West gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday. “Tough, stubborn and fearless”, she was educated, but chose to work as a prostitute due to the independence it provided her. She is the only woman with whom Holliday is known to have had a relationship.

Born in 1850’s
Pat Garrett
(June 5, 1850 – February 29, 1908)
He was an American Old West lawman, bartender and customs agent known for killing Billy the Kid in 1881. He was the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, as well as Doña Ana County, New Mexico.
Julius Mortimer “Bronc(h)o Charlie” Miller
(December 1850 – 15 January 1955)
He was an American horse tamer and Pony Express rider. He was born on the trail in California to parents travelling west for the California Gold Rush. At the age of 11 Miller claimed to have become the youngest ever Pony Express rider, claiming to have done so after witnessing a horse arrive without its rider at the station in Sacramento. Miller then worked as a horse trainer, from which he earnt his nickname, including a period working on Teddy Roosevelt‘s cattle ranch. Afterwards he became a performer demonstrating roping techniques, horse riding and knife throwing. On his travels he met and married Carrie Potter, who joined and became a target girl in his act.
Miller was known as a teller of “tall tales”, though many of them were true. He stated that he joined the Canadian Army and fought in the First World War and also volunteered to serve in the Korean War. Miller claimed an acquaintance with many Old West figures including Bill Hickok, Jim Bridger, Calamity Jane, George Custer, the Marquis de Morès and Sitting Bull.
Calamity Jane
(May 1, 1852 – August 1, 1903),
She was an American frontierswoman, sharpshooter, and storyteller. In addition to many exploits, she was known for being an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok. Late in her life, she appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. She is said to have exhibited compassion to others, especially to the sick and needy. This facet of her character contrasted with her daredevil ways and helped to make her a noted frontier figure. She was also known for her habit of wearing men’s attire.
Kit Carson’s Kids
Kit Carson
(December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868)
He was an American frontiersman. He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime through biographies and news articles; exaggerated versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels. His understated nature belied confirmed reports of his fearlessness, combat skills, tenacity, as well as profound effect on the westward expansion of the United States. Although he was famous for much of his life, historians in later years have written that Kit Carson did not like, want, or even fully understand the fame that he experienced during his life.
His wife was
Maria Jaramillo
(Mar 19, 1828 – April 23, 1868
Together they were the parents of 7 kids including
William Julian Carson (1852 – 1889)
Teresina Carson (1855 – 1916)
Stanford White
(November 9, 1853 – June 25, 1906)
He was an American architect and a partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, one of the most significant Beaux-Arts firms at the turn of the 20th century. White designed many houses for the wealthy, in addition to numerous civic, institutional and religious buildings. His temporary Washington Square Arch was so popular that he was commissioned to design a permanent one. White’s design principles embodied the “American Renaissance“.
In 1906, White was murdered during a musical performance at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden. His killer, Harry Kendall Thaw, was a wealthy but mentally unstable heir of a coal and railroad fortune who had become obsessed by White’s alleged drugging and rape of, and subsequent relationship with, the woman who was to become Thaw’s wife, Evelyn Nesbit, which had started when she was aged 16. At the time of White’s killing, Nesbit was a famous fashion model. With the public nature of the killing and elements of a sex scandal among the wealthy, the resulting trial of Thaw was dubbed the “Trial of the Century” by contemporary reporters. Thaw was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity.
March 2 – Roderick Maclean fails in an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria, at Windsor. (c. 1854 – 8 June 1921) was a Scotsman who attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria on 2 March 1882, at Windsor, England, with a pistol. This was the last of eight attempts by separate people to kill or assault Victoria over a period of four decades. Maclean’s motive was purportedly a curt reply to some poetry that he had mailed to the Queen.
Bat Masterson
(November 26, 1853 – October 25, 1921)
He was a U.S. Army scout, lawman, professional gambler, and journalist known for his exploits in the late 19th and early 20th-century American Old West. He was born to a working-class Irish family in Quebec, but he moved to the Western frontier as a young man and quickly distinguished himself as a buffalo hunter, civilian scout, and Indian fighter on the Great Plains. He later earned fame as a gunfighter and sheriff in Dodge City, Kansas, during which time he was involved in several notable shootouts.
John Hughes (lawman)
(February 11, 1855 – June 3, 1947)
He was a Texas Ranger and cowboy of the Old West, and later an author. Several books were written about him, known as one of the most influential Texas Rangers of all time. He was said to have inspired the fictional Lone Ranger character prominent in Western stories of the 20th century, since Zane Grey dedicated his novel The Lone Star Ranger to Hughes in 1915. Hughes conducted a long hunt for the killers of Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones. Hughes himself told relatives that he believed he was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger character.
J. Edgar Hoover’s Parents
Dickerson Naylor Hoover (1856–1921)
+ Anna Marie (née Scheitlin; 1860–1938)
J. Edgar Hoover
(January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972)
He was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the final Director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). President Calvin Coolidge first appointed Hoover as director of the BOI, the predecessor to the FBI, in 1924. After 11 years in the post, Hoover became instrumental in founding the FBI in June 1935, where he remained as director for an additional 37 years until his death in May 1972 – serving a total of 48 years leading both the BOI and the FBI under eight Presidents.
Hoover expanded the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency and instituted a number of modernizations to policing technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. Hoover also established and expanded a national blacklist, referred to as the FBI Index or Index List.
Later in life and after his death, Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface. He was also found to have routinely violated both the FBI’s own policies and the very laws which the FBI was charged with enforcing, to have used the FBI to harass and sabotage political dissidents, and to have extensively collected information on officials and private citizens using illegal surveillance, wiretapping, and burglaries. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was able to intimidate and threaten high-ranking political figures.
Alex McDonald (prospector)
(1859–1909)
He was a Canadian gold prospector who made (and lost) a fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush, earning himself the title “King of the Klondike”.
Jesse Pomeroy
(November 29, 1859 – September 29, 1932)
He was a convicted American murderer and possible serial killer and the youngest person in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be convicted of murder in the first degree. He was found guilty by a jury trial held in the Supreme Judicial Court of Suffolk County in December 1874. He was also a suspected serial killer.
Born in 1860’s
Lizzie Borden
(July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927)
She was an American woman who was tried and acquitted of the August 4, 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. No one else was charged in the murders, and, despite ostracism from other residents, Borden spent the remainder of her life in Fall River. She died of pneumonia at the age of 66, just days before the death of her older sister, Emma.
The Borden murders and trial received widespread publicity in the United States, and have remained a topic in American popular culture depicted in numerous films, theatrical productions, literary works, and folk rhymes around the Fall River area.
In 1889 Bridget Sullivan comes to work for the Bordens. (called “Maggie” by the daughters).
George Carmack
(September 24, 1860 – June 5, 1922)
He was an American prospector in the Yukon. He was originally credited with registering Discovery Claim, the discovery of gold that set off the Klondike Gold Rush on August 16, 1896. Today, historians usually give the credit to his Tagish brother-in-law, Skookum Jim Mason (c. 1855 – July 11, 1916).
Frank Eaton
(October 26, 1860 – April 8, 1958)
He was a scout, sheriff, and cowboy.
Tom Horn
(November 21, 1860 – November 20, 1903)
He was an American scout, cowboy, soldier, range detective, and Pinkerton agent in the 19th-century and early 20th-century American Old West.
Ishi
(c. 1861 – March 25, 1916)
He was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California in the United States. The rest of the Yahi (as well as many members of their parent tribe, the Yana) were killed in the California genocide in the 19th century. Widely described as the “last wild Indian” in the U.S., Ishi lived most of his life isolated from modern North American culture, and was the last known Native manufacturer of stone arrowheads. In 1911, aged 50, he emerged at a barn and corral, 2 mi (3.2 km) from downtown Oroville, California.
Ishi, which means “man” in the Yana language, is an adopted name. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave him this name because in the Yahi culture, tradition demanded that he not speak his own name until formally introduced by another Yahi. When asked his name, he said: “I have none, because there were no people to name me”, meaning that there was no other Yahi to speak his name on his behalf.
Anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, took Ishi in, studied him, and hired him as a janitor. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco. His life was depicted and discussed in multiple films and books, notably the biographical account Ishi in Two Worlds published by Theodora Kroeber in 1961.
Jessie James’s Assassin
Robert Ford (outlaw)
(December 8, 1861 – June 8, 1892)
was an American outlaw who killed fellow outlaw Jesse James on April 3, 1882. He and his brother Charley, both members of the James–Younger Gang under James’s leadership, went on to perform paid re-enactments of the killing at publicity events. Ford would spend his later years operating multiple saloons and dance halls in the West.
Ten years after James’s death, Ford was himself the victim of a fatal shot to the neck by Edward Capehart O’Kelley in Creede, Colorado, dying at only 30 years old. While initially buried in Creede, his remains were later exhumed and reinterred in his hometown of Richmond, Missouri.
William M. Dalton
(1863 – June 8, 1894),
Also known as William Marion “Bill” Dalton, was an outlaw in the American Old West. He was the co-leader of the Wild Bunch gang and with his brothers Gratton, Bob and Emmett Dalton was a member of the Dalton Gang.
Capone’s Parents
Gabriele Capone (1865–1920)
+ Teresa Capone (1867–1952).
= Richard James Hart
(March 28, 1892 – October 1, 1952)
He was an Italian-American sharpshooter and prohibition agent, who was noted for his cowboy style and for being the elder brother of gangster
Frank Capone
(January 12, 1894 – November 22, 1974)
He was an Italian-American mobster and an older brother of Al Capone and He got the nickname “Bottles” not from involvement in the Capone bootlegging empire, but from his running the legitimate non-alcoholic beverage and bottling operations in Chicago. Further family lore suggests that the nickname was specifically tied to his lobbying the Illinois legislature to put into law that milk bottling companies had to stamp the date that the milk was bottled on the bottle. He was most famous for being named by the Chicago Crime Commission “Public Enemy Number Three” when his brother Al was “Public Enemy Number One”. He was the elder brother of gangster
Ralph Capone
(July 16, 1895 – April 1, 1924)
He was an Italian-American mobster who participated in the attempted takeover of Cicero, Illinois by the Chicago Outfit. He worked in the businesses with his brother
Al Capone
(January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947)
Sometimes known by the nickname “Scarface“, was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33.
Elfego Baca
(February 10, 1865 – August 27, 1945)
He was a gunfighter, law enforcement officer, lawyer, and politician in New Mexico, who became an American folk hero of the later years of the New Mexico Territory frontier. His goal in life was to be a peace officer, and for “the outlaws to hear [his] steps a block away”. He is known for his involvement in an 1884 shootout in Frisco (now Reserve), New Mexico, as well as later fictionalized representations of his life in Westerns released during the mid-20th century.

Butch Cassidy,
(April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908)
He was an American train and bank robber and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the “Wild Bunch” in the Old West.
Sundance Kid
(1867 – November 7, 1908)
He was an outlaw and member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch in the American Old West. He likely met Butch Cassidy (real name Robert LeRoy Parker) during a hunting trip in 1883 or earlier. The gang performed the longest string of successful train and bank robberies in American history.
Longabaugh fled the United States along with his consort Etta Place and Butch Cassidy to escape the dogged pursuit of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The trio fled first to Argentina and then to Bolivia, where most historians believe Parker (Cassidy) and Longabaugh were killed in a shootout in November 1908.
Born in 1870’s
Albert Fish,
(May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1936)
He was an American serial killer, rapist, child molester and cannibal who committed at least three child murders between July 1924 and June 1928. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac, and the Boogey Man. Fish was a suspect in at least ten murders during his lifetime, although he only confessed to three murders that police were able to trace to a known homicide. He also confessed to stabbing at least two other people.
Bill Pickett
(December 5, 1870 – April 2, 1932)
He was an African American cowboy, rodeo performer, and actor. In 1989, Pickett was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.
Pearl Hart
(1871 – December 30, 1955)
He was a Canadian-born outlaw of the American Old West. She committed one of the last recorded stagecoach robberies in the United States, and her crime gained notoriety primarily because of her gender. Many details of Hart’s life are uncertain, with available reports being varied and often contradictory.
Harry Kendall Thaw
(February 12, 1871 – February 22, 1947)
He was the son of American coal and railroad baron William Thaw Sr. Heir to a multimillion-dollar fortune, he is most notable for murdering the renowned architect Stanford White in front of hundreds of witnesses at the rooftop theatre of New York City’s Madison Square Garden on June 25, 1906.
Emmett Dalton
(May 3, 1871 – July 13, 1937)
He was an American outlaw, train robber and member of the Dalton Gang in the American Old West. Part of a gang that attempted to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kansas, on October 5, 1892, he was the only member of five to survive, despite receiving 23 gunshot wounds. Two of his brothers were killed. After serving 14 years in prison for the crime, Dalton was pardoned. He later capitalized on his notoriety, both as a writer and as an actor. His 1918 serial story Beyond the Law was adapted as a like-named silent film in which he played himself. His 1931 book When the Daltons Rode was adapted after his death as a 1940 film of the same name.
The Queen of the Mountain Bootleggers’ Parents
Robert “Bob” Davidson (1871-unknown)
+ Ellen Gilliam Davidson (1880-1959)
= Maggie “Megs” Davidson Bailey
(1904-2005)
Maggie Bailey, known as “The Queen of the Mountain Bootleggers” is a Kentucky legend, who began selling moonshine when she was 17 and was still selling alcohol from her modest home at Clovertown in Harlan County when she was 95, was 101.
Over and over again, often despite a preponderance of the evidence against her, Mrs. Bailey beat charges of illegally selling alcoholic beverages. Juries just would not convict her.
“Everybody knew her and she had helped everybody. Why do you bite the hand that feeds you, as the old saying goes”, said Helen Halcomb, who is married to Mrs. Bailey’s nephew.
Mrs. Bailey was well-liked and well-respected, and she often helped poor Harlan Countains, buying coal to heat their homes in the winter and giving them grocery money so they would not go hungry, friends said. Mrs. Bailey put several children through college. –Find a Grave Memorial
From NPR
Mr. DOAN: Well, in the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s, she was selling moonshine, which was untaxed. In the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s and ’90s and up until–she was in business till she was 95–Harlan County, Clovertown is a dry county–means it’s illegal to sell any type of alcoholic beverage, and she continued to sell it and was never convicted.
BLOCK: What kind of operation was it at her house?
Mr. DOAN: Well, she just had a–she lived in a plain house. You would pull to the back of the house, and most likely she’d have a conversation with you, ask you who your mom and dad was if she couldn’t remember your face, so she knew everybody. And you would tell her–you know, if you want a six-pack of Blue Ribbon and somebody would go in and bring you out a cold six-pack of Blue Ribbon and you would pay for it, and then you would leave.
BLOCK: Would there be anybody that she wouldn’t sell to?
Mr. DOAN: She didn’t sell to children and she didn’t sell to drunkards, what we call alcoholics. She called ’em drunkards.
BLOCK: (Laughs) Did Maggie Bailey drink herself?
Mr. DOAN: No, she did not. She never drank.
BLOCK: You know, I’ve read that one of her attorneys said that she was very well-versed in the law. She knew everything there was to know about the Fourth Amendment, about search and seizure.
Mr. DOAN: Oh, yeah, she knew the Fourth Amendment backwards and forwards. She could cite cases to me and the case numbers and so forth.
BLOCK: What did see tell you about why she kept doing what she was doing?
Mr. DOAN: She said it kept her alive. She said it kept her young.
Andrew Kehoe –
(February 1, 1872 – May 18, 1927)
He was an American mass murderer. Kehoe was a Michigan farmer who became disgruntled after losing reelection as treasurer of the Bath Township school board. He murdered his wife and then detonated bombs at the Bath Consolidated School on May 18, 1927, resulting in the Bath School disaster in which 44 people were killed and 58 more people were injured. Kehoe killed himself near the school by detonating dynamite in his truck, killing himself and several other people and wounding more. He had earlier set off incendiary devices in his house and around his farm, destroying all the buildings. The event remains the deadliest act of mass murder at an American school.
Ma Barker
(October 8, 1873 – January 16, 1935),
She was the mother of several American criminals who ran the Barker–Karpis Gang during the “public enemy era” when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the Midwestern United States gripped the American people and press. She traveled with her sons during their criminal careers.
Pearl Bryan
(c. 1874–1896)
She was a 22-year-old pregnant American woman from Greencastle, Indiana who was found decapitated in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, in 1896. Her head was severed below the fifth vertebra. Due to the murder’s gruesome nature, it achieved significant notoriety at the time.[2] More recently, there have been claims that her ghost haunts Bobby Mackey’s Music World located in Wilder, Kentucky.
William McCoy (rum runner)
(August 17, 1877 – December 30, 1948),
He was an American sea captain and rum-runner during the Prohibition in the United States. In pursuing the trade of smuggling alcohol from the Bahamas to the Eastern Seaboard, Capt. McCoy, found a role model in John Hancock of pre-revolutionary Boston and considered himself an “honest lawbreaker.” McCoy took pride in the fact that he never paid a cent to organized crime, politicians, or law enforcement for protection. Unlike many operations that illegally produced and smuggled alcohol for consumption during Prohibition, McCoy sold his merchandise unadulterated, uncut and clean – therein becoming known as “The Real McCoy”.
Brushy Bill Roberts
(August 26, 1879– December 27, 1950; claimed date of birth December 31, 1859)
He was an American man who attracted attention in the late 1940s and the 1950s by claiming to be Western outlaw William H. Bonney, (who actually died in 1881). Roberts’ claim was rejected by the governor of New Mexico, Thomas J. Mabry, in 1950. Brushy Bill’s story is promoted by the “Billy the Kid Museum” in his hometown of Hico in Hamilton County, Texas. His claim was explored in a 2011 episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded and a segment by Robert Stack in 1989 on Unsolved Mysteries.
Born in 1880’s
Isidor “Izzy” Einstein (1880–1938) and Moe W. Smith (1887–1960) were United States federal police officers, agents of the U.S. Prohibition Unit, who achieved the most arrests and convictions during the first years of the alcohol prohibition era (1920–1925). They were known nationally for successfully shutting down illegal speakeasies and for using disguises in their work.
They made 4,933 arrests. In late 1925, Izzy and Moe were laid off in a reorganization of the bureau of enforcement. A report in Time magazine suggested they had attracted more publicity than wanted by the new political appointee heading the bureau, although the press and public loved the team. By 1930 both men were working as insurance salesmen.
Texas Guinan
(January 12, 1884 – November 5, 1933)
She was an American actress, producer, and entrepreneur. Born in Texas to Irish immigrant parents, Guinan decided at an early age to become an entertainer. After becoming a star on the New York stage, the repercussions of her involvement in a weight loss scam motivated her to switch careers to the film business. Spending several years in California appearing in numerous productions, she eventually formed her own company.
She is most remembered for the speakeasy clubs she managed during Prohibition. Her clubs catered to the rich and famous, as well as to aspiring talent. After being arrested and indicted during a law enforcement sweep of speakeasy clubs, she was acquitted when her case went to trial.
Leo Frank,
(April 17, 1884 – August 17, 1915)
He was an American factory superintendent and lynching victim. He was convicted in 1913 of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in Atlanta, Georgia. Frank’s trial, conviction, and unsuccessful appeals attracted national attention. His kidnapping from prison and lynching became the focus of social, regional, political, and racial concerns, particularly regarding antisemitism. Modern researchers generally agree that Frank was wrongly convicted.
Joe Masseria
(January 17, 1886 – April 15, 1931)
He was an early Italian-American Mafia boss in New York City. He was boss of what is now called the Genovese crime family, one of the New York City Mafia’s Five Families, from 1922 to 1931. In 1930, he battled in the Castellammarese War to take over the criminal activities in New York City. The war ended with his murder on April 15, 1931, in a hit ordered by his own lieutenant, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, in an agreement with rival faction head Salvatore Maranzano.
Salvatore Maranzano
(July 31, 1886 – September 10, 1931),
Nicknamed Little Caesar was an Italian-American mobster from the town of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, and an early Cosa Nostra boss who led what later would become the Bonanno crime family in New York City. He instigated the Castellammarese War in 1930 to seize control of the American Mafia, winning the war after the murder of rival faction head Joe Masseria in April 1931. He then briefly became the Mafia’s capo di tutti capi (“boss of all bosses”) and formed the Five Families in New York City, but was murdered on September 10, 1931, on the orders of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who established The Commission, in which families shared power to prevent future turf wars.
Frank “Jelly” Nash
(February 6, 1887 – June 17, 1933)
He was an American bank robber, and has been called “the most successful bank robber in U.S. history.” He is most noted for his violent death in the Kansas City Massacre. Nash spent part of his childhood in Paragould, Arkansas (Greene County) and was arrested in Hot Springs, Arkansas (Garland County) the day before his death.
Harvey Bailey
(August 23, 1887 – March 1, 1979),
Called “The Dean of American Bank Robbers“, was an American criminal who spanned a long career and was one of the most successful bank robbers during the 1920s, walking off with over $1 million.
Johanne Elizabeth “Bertha” Schippan
(January 1888 –January 1, 1902)
She turned 1 years old in 1889. She is remembered for being murdered at 13 years old.
The murder of Johanne Elizabeth “Bertha” Schippan is an unsolved Australian murder. The victim, the youngest child in a large Wendish family, resided in the South Australian town of Towitta, located approximately 6 km (3.7 mi) west of Sedan. She was murdered on the night of January 1, 1902. Her 24-year-old sister, Maria “Mary” Auguste (Sept 10, 1877 –July 4, 1919), was prosecuted for the crime, but was eventually acquitted. Despite various theories, the case remains unsolved and continues to attract media attention.

Gertrude Lythgoe
(March 1, 1888 – June 24, 1974)
She was one of the most prominent female rum-runners, or bootleggers, in the 1920s. She had various jobs before working for A. L. William Co in London where she began her involvement in the rum trade. Working out of the city of Nassau in the Bahamas she legally sold imported alcohol to bootleggers during the 1920s.
Little recording and research into the role of women selling alcohol during the 1920s has been conducted. However, most women worked domestically, while few were entrepreneurs in the bootlegging business, and no others on such a scale as Gertrude Lythgoe.