Law Enforcer
James Butler- "Wild Bill Hickok"
Born: 1837 Died: 1876
Wild Bill Hickok is a legendary gunfighter and lawman, he was said to have had twenty seven notches cut in the handle of his revolver, each signifying a man he had killed! Born in Illinois, Hickok went to Kansas in 1855 to become a stagecoach driver on the Santa Fe Trail. An avid Free Stater, he served as a union scout and spy during the civil war, and in 1865 he began to build his reputation as a gunfighter after killing Dave Tutt, a noted gunman and a fellow scout who had turned into a traitor. A year later Hickok was appointed deputy U.S. marshal at Fort Riley, Kansas, acting as a scout on the side for Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in his operations against the Plains Indians. Something of a dandy, Hickok was a marshal of one of the roughest cow towns in the West, Abilene, Kansas in 1871, but there is strong evidence that he did more gambling than peace-keeping. In 1876, while playing poker in the town of Deadwood, Dakota Territory, he was shot in the back of the head and killed by a publicity seeker named Jack McCall. The hand held, a pair of aces and a pair of eights, thereafter entered poker parlance as the "dead man's hand."
Indian fighter
Daniel Boone
Born: 1734 Died: 1820
Daniel Boone, the prototype American frontiersman and Indian fighter carved this record of his passage on a tree in the Kentucky wilderness: "D. Booncilled A. Bar in the year 1760" although the year may have been as finical as the spelling Boone probably did not visit Kentucky before 1767 the frontiersman's place in American history as the leader of the first movement of white settlers across the Appalachian mountains in well documented. Born in 1734 to a farming couple near the present sit of Reading, Pa., Boone moved with his parents to North Carolina in 1750. Already an expert with gun and knife, he took every opportunity to head for the wildernes to hunt and trap. Boone joined a ill-fated expedition for edventure, this expedition was led by Gen. Edward Bradock against the French at Fort Duguesne (Pittsburgh). Daniel survived and went back to his family that he lived with and was married in 1756. Boone wanted to live in Florida but his wife rejected that idea, so he started looking at Kentucky! He hunted for months there then during the Revolutionary War, Boone was named captain of a militia and spent much of his time fighting Indians allied with the British. He was captured by Shawnee war party in 1778, he was so impressed by the cheif he was adopted by the tribe. He was happy but he had to leave because he was still loyal to the settlers. He then moved to Spanish-held Missouri, where there he settled down to spinning tall tales about his earlier life.
Outlaw
Jesse Woodson James- "Jesse James"
Born: 1847 Died: 1882
In the legends of the Old West, Outlaw Jesse James stands preeminent among his kind as a latter-day Robin Hood who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. History, however, treats the bank robber and desperado leader with considerably less sympathy. It reveals Jesse and his brother Frank as ruthless brigands, who, from 1866 on through 1881, ranged the west robbing banks and trains and cutting down anyone who opposed them. Jesse James was born in Clay Country, Mo., in 1847 and during the civil war, served as a confederate guerrilla under William C. Quantrill. In 1866 the James brothers joined forces with Cole younger and others to begin a 15-year rampage of violence and robbery throughout the west. In the spring of 1882 Jesse, who was living near St Joseph, Mo., as Thomas Howard, was killed by Bob Ford, a member of his gang. Six months later Frank James gave himself up and was twice tried and acquitted for his crimes and then lived as a respectable farmer.